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Here is an excerpt from Wikipedia on integrated care, including definitions and other relevant information. Please read the text carefully and complete to quiz to check your comprehension.
Integrated care, also known as integrated
health, coordinated care, comprehensive care, seamless care,
or transmural care is a worldwide trend in health care reforms and new
organizational arrangements focusing on more coordinated and integrated forms
of care provision. Integrated care may be seen as a response to the fragmented
delivery of health and social services being an acknowledged problem in many
health systems
WHO gives the following definition: "Integrated care is a concept bringing together inputs, delivery, management, and organization of services related to diagnosis, treatment, care, rehabilitation, and health promotionβ. Integration is a means to improve services in relation to access, quality, user satisfaction, and efficiency."
The integrated care literature distinguishes between different ways and degrees of working together and three central terms in this respect are autonomy, coordination, and integration. While autonomy refers to the one end of a continuum with the least co-operation, integration (the combination of parts into a working whole by overlapping services) refers to the end with most co-operation and co-ordination (the relation of parts) to a point in between.
A distinction is also made between horizontal integration (linking similar levels of care like multiprotection teams) and vertical integration (linking different levels of care like primary, secondary, and tertiary care).
Continuity of care is closely related to integrated care and emphasizes the patient's perspective through the system of health and social services, providing valuable lessons for the integration of systems. Continuity of care is often subdivided into three components:
- Continuity of information (by shared records),
- Continuity across the secondary-primary care interface (discharge planning from specialist to generalist care), and
- Provider continuity (seeing the same professional each time, with value-added if there is a therapeutic, trusting relationship).
Integrated care seems particularly important to service providers to the elderly, as elderly patients often become chronically ill and subject to co-morbidities and so have a special need of continuous care.
The NHS Long Term Plan, and many other documents advocating integration, claim that it will produce reductions in costs or emergency admissions to the hospital but there is no convincing evidence to support this.