Abstract
Complex chronic conditions often require long-term care from various healthcare professionals. Thus, maintaining quality care requires care coordination. Concepts for the study of care coordination require clarification to develop, study and evaluate coordination strategies. In 2007, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality defined care coordination and proposed five theoretical frameworks for exploring care coordination. This study aimed to update current theoretical frameworks and clarify key concepts related to care coordination. We performed a literature review to update existing theoretical frameworks. An in-depth analysis of these theoretical frameworks was conducted to formulate key concepts related to care coordination. Our literature review found seven previously unidentified theoretical frameworks for studying care coordination. The in-depth analysis identified fourteen key concepts that the theoretical frameworks addressed. These were 'external factors', 'structure', 'tasks characteristics', 'cultural factors', 'knowledge and technology', 'need for coordination', 'administrative operational processes', 'exchange of information', 'goals', 'roles', 'quality of relationship', 'patient outcome', 'team outcome', and '(inter)organizational outcome'. These 14 interrelated key concepts provide a base to develop or choose a framework for studying care coordination. The relational coordination theory and the multi-level framework are interesting as these are the most comprehensive.
Highlights
Complex chronic conditions often require long-term care from various healthcare professionals
Articles were excluded when: 1) the definition of care coordination did not correspond to any of the key elements defined in the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality review [5]; 2) no theoretical framework was described, meaning no links or relationships between the concepts defined were established; or 3) no application of the theoretical framework was found in a healthcare setting, either in the initial search or in the Web of Knowledge search for articles that referred to theoretical frameworks
We excluded studies describing the development or implementation of coordination strategies or articles that referred to frameworks for implementing coordination strategies to focus on theoretical framework for the study of care coordination
Summary
Complex chronic conditions often require long-term care from various healthcare professionals. The fact that patients with complex chronic conditions often require long-term care from different healthcare and social care professionals, both in the community and the hospital, has led to an increasing need for care coordination to ensure good quality care [3,4,5]. Strategies to improve care coordination are frequently developed to ensure good quality care The fact that these strategies do not always lead to the desired outcome [6,7,8] is due in part to the lack of clarity about the concept of care coordination and the theoretical frameworks for evaluating interventions, and in part to the uncertainty in how best to measure care coordination [5]. Organizing care involves the marshalling of personnel and other resources needed to carry out all required patient care activities, and is often managed by the exchange of information among participants responsible for different aspects of care” [5]
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