Review Article - Journal of Primary Care and General Practice (2021) Volume 4, Issue 1

Interventions to improve care coordination in primary care: A narrative review.

Background: Care coordination in primary care is one of the main challenges for the future of health systems. We reviewed the literature to identify interventions that could improve coordination in the primary care setting. Methods: We conducted a literature review of articles referenced in the PubMed database between January 2000 and Avril 2020, (MESH terms: “Primary Care / Primary Health Care”, “Coordination / Care Coordination / Coordinated Care / Coordinating” and “Physician / General practitioner / Family practitioner / Primary care providers”). Two independent reviewers took part in the selection, data extraction and content analysis. All individual similar interventions were pooled and described for their overall benefit / harm on patients’coordination. Interventions were grouped according to categories described in the literature. Results: We found 4044 publications, of which 103, evaluating care coordination interventions, met inclusion criteria. We classified 62% of care coordination interventions into the category "Structuring relationships between service providers and patients" and 59% into "Systems to support the coordination of care”. The interventions involving "case managers", "multidisciplinary teams", "patient education" "care plans", and "electronic health records" were associated with the greatest number of articles describing positive effects. Conclusion: This narrative review illustratesthe wide variety of studied interventions to optimize the coordination of care in primary care. Future research assessing impact of these interventions on patient management are necessary.

Author(s): Regula Cardinaux, Nicolas Ochs, Carole Michalski, Jacques Cornuz, Prof. Nicolas Senn, Christine Cohidon*

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