What should integrated care look like ... ?

Abstract

Fragmentation and poor communication among different parts of the health service are seen as some of the causes of the problems that the NHS is now facing. Front-line services are under greater pressure than ever, hospitals are severely stretched, support in the community is often flimsy and uneven, and patients with complex needs often get lost in the system. Much has been written about integrated care, although there is not yet a real consensus about exactly what this means in different settings and how it will contribute to the improvement of services and better use of resources. To generate further debate and discussion we asked five experts for their vision of what integrated care should look like for five important groups of patients: children, older people, people with cancer, those with mental health problems, and patients with multimorbidity.