Integrated care: easy in theory, harder in practice?
Integrated care (IC) is a term now commonly adopted across the world, which implies a positive attitude towards addressing fragmentation of service provision inside health systems. While the principles of IC are simple, their implementation is more controversial. The ever growing number of IC definitions is related to the increasing domains of applications, which reflect the increasing demand induced by ageing multi-morbid patients. An exhaustive definition of IC should now enclose the coordination of health and social services useful to deliver seamless care across organizational boundaries. The current debate on IC is largely fueled by the modern mismatch between the growing burden of health needs for chronic conditions from the demand side and the design of health systems still largely centered on acute care from the supply side. The major reasons of persisting IC weakness in Western European nations stem from arguable choices of health policy taken in a quite ...