Project INTEGRATE will describe how integrated care can be of added value to patients with chronic conditions while taking into account case, care, quality assessment and health system complexity.
Today, there is no is universally accepted definition of integrated care. Integrated care is a concept that is polymorphous in its kind and that has been applied from several disciplinary and professional perspectives and is associated with diverse objectives.
In project INTEGRATE we recognize that no ‘best practice’ model of integrated care exists for all situations. Whilst certain models or approaches to integrated care will be well suited to delivering better outcomes for people in specific situations, delivering integration in care is unlikely to follow a single path and variations are likely to be important dependent on the context in which they are delivered. As a consequence, multiple modalities and degrees of integration can coexist within a single system.
Project INTEGRATE will try to gradually contribute to an improved conceptualization of integrated care. A paper will be written on the concept of integrated care over the summer period. We already performed a review of the literature and identified twenty-two requirements for achieving success through integrated care which are related to the six dimensions of the Chronic Care Model and refer to either system, organizational, functional, professional or personal integration.
If you want to know more about the first steps towards the conceptualization of integrated care in the context of Project INTEGRATE, you can contact us.