Abstract
I am delighted to introduce the inaugural issue of the International Journal of Care Coordination (IJCC). The journal’s gestation began with a call for papers in April 2014. This has resulted in an influx of submissions by authors from different countries, clearly illustrating the relevance of care coordination for different healthcare systems throughout the world.
The IJCC was formerly published as the International Journal of Care Pathways. Under the former title, the journal has produced 49 issues over 16 years, starting in 1997. For this achievement as well as for building such a solid basis, I would like to express my thanks to all members of the editorial board and the authors who contributed to the journal. One of the most important reasons for the journal to renew itself is the growing demand for as well as supply of various strategies to improve the delivery of healthcare and their outcomes. In this light, care pathways remain of interest to the IJCC. Additionally, the IJCC aims to focus on other improvement strategies captured under the words ‘care coordination’.
The IJCC has adopted the working definition of care coordination, as defined by McDonald et al.
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as part of the Care Coordination Measures Atlas. According to this definition: care coordination is the deliberate organization of patient care activities between two or more participants (including the patient) involved in a patient’s care to facilitate the appropriate delivery of health care services. Organizing care involves the marshalling of personnel and other resources needed to carry out all required patient care activities and is often managed by the exchange of information among participants responsible for different aspects of care.
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The attractiveness of this definition is twofold. First, it is derived by reviewing existing definitions and as a result utilizes existing information about the meaning of care coordination. Second, it allows perspectives of multiple stakeholders and as such reflects daily practice of healthcare delivery and its evaluation.
This issue contains a delightfully diverse selection of research about care coordination. The first paper by Schultz and McDonald outlines what care coordination is and discusses how their working definition can help guide the iterative process of developing conceptual models, testing and refining them, generating evidence about what works best, and ultimately improving the quality of care. 2
The second, third and fourth article represent international research about care coordination. Elissen et al. 3 report on the evaluation of disease management strategies in six European countries, as part of the DISMEVAL study. They not only report about the variation in disease management strategies in different countries but also the variation in evaluation approaches applied. Based on the data of more than 154,000 patients with three conditions, ‘real world’ effects of strategies on the quality and outcomes are reported and discussed.
As part of the European Union (EU) Cross Border Collaboration, Döring et al. 4 have explored the extent to which EU level policy and practice on electronic health records address issues pertinent to the development and implementation of electronic discharge summaries for patients treated outside their own country. Recognizing that communication is a key-component of care coordination, the challenges identified in this study are of utmost importance for policy makers. Ahgren 5 states that decentralization, specialization and professionalization in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden have contributed to insufficient coordinated care for patients and discusses how these countries differentiate in their collaboration models to reduce fragmentation of healthcare services for patients. All three studies illustrate the variety across Europe in strategies to improve care coordination, the results of such strategies, as well as the many different research methods applied in this emerging and complicated field.
The final two papers in this issue take us back to daily practice. Berben et al. 6 have developed and validated an instrument (i.e. CIMI-BRIGHT instrument) to measure the implementation of chronic care management in transplant programs from the healthcare professionals’ perspective. This study describes how care coordination fits in the broader conceptualization of chronic care management and how it (and the other building blocks) can be measured in follow-up care of transplant patients to support clinical practice and research. Faber et al. 7 discuss the gap between organizational demands and the quest for patient involvement. In so doing, they critically reflect on coordinated care pathways and identify the challenges in the delivery of patient-centred and coordinated care within the context of organizational structures and evidence-based medicine.
In summary, the articles in this inaugural issue of the IJCC reflect much of the excitement, progress, and various challenges surrounding care coordination in various healthcare settings and systems. I encourage you to read all the articles to grasp the richness of research in care coordination. Finally, I would like to invite you to submit your ‘innovation’ work to the IJCC as, apart from our regular issues, we plan to release a special issue on care coordination and innovation, and their business models. For this special issue, we are working with the BUS5.1X team of edX. 8