Continuity of Care

Higher continuity of care is associated with improved health outcomes and significantly reduced risk of avoidable hospitalisations. The study evaluated both physician-specific continuity and broader general-practice team continuity. Interventions that raise patient empowerment without also addressing eHealth literacy will capture only approximately 25% of the potential reduction in unmet care needs. Continuity of care describes healthcare events as coherent, connected, and consistent with a patient's needs and context. Continuity of care refers to familiarity and mutual trust developed through repeated encounters with regular healthcare providers. The mean continuity of care needs score of 24.17 on a 6–30 scale indicates substantial unmet care needs in the study population. Fifteen of the eighteen included articles described problems caused by limited informational and relational continuity. Relational continuity is commonly measured in administrative health data because informational and management continuity are harder to capture in structured records. Telephone contacts with assistants and nurses were excluded from team-continuity calculations because they often concern adminis…