Handbook Integrated Care

This handbook shares profound insights into the main principles and concepts of integrated care. It offers a multi-disciplinary perspective with a focus on patient orientation, efficiency, and quality by applying widely recognized management approaches to the field of healthcare. The handbook also highlights international best practices and shows how integrated care can work in various health systems.

In the majority of health systems around the world, the delivery of healthcare and social care is characterised by fragmentation and complexity. Consequently, much of the recent international discussion in the fields of health policy and health management has focused on the topic of integrated care. 'Integrated' acknowledges the complexity of patients' needs and aims to meet them by taking into account both health and social care aspects. Changing and improving processes in a coordinated way is at the heart of this approach.

The second edition offers new chapters on people-centredness, complexity theories and evaluation methods, additional management tools and a wealth of experiences from different countries and localities. It is essential reading both for health policymakers seeking inspiration for legislation and for practitioners involved in the management of public health services who want to learn from good practice.

Volker Amelung is a Professor of Health Management and International Health Services at the Medical University of Hannover, Germany. His main research interests are managed care, integrated care and payment systems. He is also President of the German Managed Care Association (BMC) and founded a private institute for applied health research (inav) in Berlin in 2011.

Viktoria Stein is Professor at the Leiden University Medical Centre, co-founder and co-CEO of VM Partners Integrating Health and Care, and Joint-Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Integrated Care. She has worked extensively to promote integrated care on the local, regional, national and international levels throughout her career - a role, which she also filled during her time with the International Foundation for Integrated Care. As a consultant and expert for international agencies like the World Health Organisation, World Bank, the European Commission, or Accreditation Canada, she provided input on so diverse topics as workforce development, integrated care design, evaluation and monitoring, or population health management and community involvement. A special focus throughout her career has been the creation of learning opportunities and environments, which foster knowledge generation and exchange.

Esther Suter is a health systems researcher and Adjunct Professor with the Faculty of Social Work, University of Calgary. She has over 25 years of experience in policy analysis, health systems interventions and evaluation. The focus of her work is on key elements of integrated health systems, the exploration of innovative care delivery models to enhance integrated care, and measurement approaches for integrated care. 

Nicholas Goodwin is Professor and Director of the Central Coast Research Institute for Integrated Care, a joint venture of the University of Newcastle and the Central Coast Local Health District. Nick is a social scientist and has worked in the university and third sector for the past 25 years in the field of health care policy and practice. Nick was CEO of the International Foundation for Integrated Care from 2011-2019.  

Ellen Nolte is Professor for Health Services and Systems Research at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (UK) Her expertise is in health systems research, international healthcare comparisons and performance assessment, and integrated and chronic care, with a particular focus on innovative service models that seek to better meet the needs of people with complex and long-term health problems. She has published widely on health systems, integrated care, European health policy and population health assessments both in the international peer-reviewed literature and the wider literature. 

Ran Balicer is Chief Innovation Officer for Clalit - Israel's largest healthcare organization. He is also Founding Director of the Clalit Research Institute and Public Health Professor at the Ben-Gurion University, Israel. In these roles he is responsible for research, development and large-scale implementation of novel interventions in clinical practice and care integration. He also serves as Chair of the Israeli Society for Quality in Healthcare.