Evidence Supporting Integrated Care

Service delivery has developed in ways that have tended to fragment care both within and between sectors and a consequence, people typically receive care from many different providers, often in different settings or institutions. Failure to better coordinate services along the care continuum may result in suboptimal outcomes, such as potentially preventable hospitalisations, medication errors, and other adverse events. It is against this background that systems are exploring new approaches to health care delivery, promoting approaches that better integrate care and improve coordination between sectors and levels of care. This chapter provides an overview of available evidence supporting integrated care. It highlights that evidence of the impacts of integrated care as a whole is difficult to derive, given the complex nature of a concept that has been approached from different disciplinary and professional perspectives. Instead, it may be more instructive for decision-makers and practitioners to draw on evidence of impact of core elements and strategies that can help to achieve integrated care.