How can integrated care be defined?

Integrated care can be defined as a coordinated approach to healthcare across multiple disciplines. This type of care emphasizes collaboration among different healthcare providers and specialties, ensuring that patients receive comprehensive and cohesive services that address their various health needs.

By focusing on coordination, integrated care facilitates better communication among healthcare professionals, which can lead to improved patient outcomes and more efficient use of resources. It breaks down traditional barriers between specialty services and promotes a holistic understanding of a patient’s health, considering all aspects of their well-being rather than treating issues in isolation.

The other choices reflect approaches that do not align with the principles of integrated care. For example, providing segmented healthcare services suggests a lack of coordination, where various aspects of care are delivered independently without connection or collaboration. Offering care exclusively through telemedicine platforms limits accessibility and does not inherently encourage the multi-disciplinary approach that integrated care embodies. Delivering services in isolated settings implies that care is provided without the necessary collaboration or integration, further diverging from the concept of an integrated, team-based healthcare paradigm.