Collaborating while competing? The sustainability of community-based integrated care initiatives through a health partnership.

ABSTRACT:

Background

To improve health-care delivery, care providers must base their services on community health needs and create a seamless continuum of care in which these needs can be met. Though, it is not obvious that providers apply this vision. Experiments with regulated competition in the health systems of many industrialized countries trigger providers to optimize individual organizational goals rather than improve population health from a community perspective. Thus, a tension exists between the need to collaborate and the need to compete. Despite or because of this tension, community health partnerships are being promoted, and this should enforce a needs-based and integrated care delivery.

Methods

In this single case study, we retrospectively explored how local health-care

SUBMITTER: Plochg T 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC1464130 | biostudies-literature | 2006 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature