Care coordination is identified by the Institute of Medicine as a key strategy that has the potential to improve the effectiveness, safety, and efficiency of the American health care system. Well-designed, targeted care coordination that is delivered to the right people can improve outcomes for everyone: patients, providers, and payers.
There are obstacles within the American health care system that must be overcome to provide this type of care although the need for care coordination is clear. Redesigning a health care system in order to better coordinate patients’ care is important for the following reasons:
- Current health care systems are often disjointed, and processes vary among and between primary care sites and specialty sites.
- Patients are often unclear about why they are being referred from primary care to a specialist, how to make appointments, and what to do after seeing a specialist.
- Specialists do not consistently receive clear reasons for the referral or adequate information on tests that have already been done. Primary care physicians do not often receive information about what happened in a referral visit.
- Referral staff deal with many different processes and lost information, which means that care is less efficient.