Continuity of care: under attack

Continuity of Care

The American Academy of Family Physicians defines continuity of care as “the process by which the patient and his/her physician-led care team are cooperatively involved in ongoing health care management toward the shared goal of high-quality, cost-effective medical care.” Haggerty et al. identified three types of continuity in every discipline: informational, management, and relational. Informa...

State efforts to promote continuity of coverage and care under the Affordable Care Act.

Many states have worked tirelessly over the past two years to develop health insurance exchanges and prepare for the expansion of their Medicaid programs in order to meet the requirements of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Programs to expand coverage, however, do not necessarily ensure seamlessness for many individuals who are likely to experience shifts in program eligibility d...

Breaks in continuity of care and the rural senior transferred for medical care under regionalisation

Continuity of care, defined as the patient experiencing coherent care over time and place, is challenged when a rural senior with multiple medical problems is transferred to a regional hospital for acute care. From an illustrative case of an older patient with pneumonia and atrial fibrillation, we catalogue potential breaks in continuity of care. Optimal continuity of care is characterised not ...

Looking back: continuity of care.

A few numbers Between 1996 and the present, there were increases in CFPC membership from 13 000 to 28 000; staff from 65 to 140; the annual operating budget from $10 million to $40 million; the number of first-year residents entering family medicine each year from 475 to 1300; the proportion of medical school graduates selecting family medicine as their first choice from a low of 23% in 2003 to...

Primary Care Practice Design under Case Mix: Joint Consideration of Access to Care and Continuity of Care