Full Continuum Of Care Research Articles

Effect of Organizational and Environmental Factors on Service Differentiation Strategy of Integrated Healthcare Networks

During the past decade, the missions/goals of medical providers of healthcare services in the United States have shifted — from emphasizing individual, independent illness treatments to focusing on the continuum of care, population-based wellness, and providing the appropriate care in the most efficient way. Integrated healthcare networks (IHNs) — or integrated healthcare delivery systems — have been focusing heavily on their level of various partnership integration (i.e. service differentiation strategy) in order to offer a full continuum of care. The aim of this study, using the individual IHN as the unit of analysis, was to identify organizational and environmental factors that influence IHN administrators to focus on their service differentiation of market lines, including the establishment of third-party payers' contracts, the affiliation of managed-care organizations, and the alliances of various nonhospital medical providers, to provide a continuum of care. The study findings show that tax status of an IHN, its age, and market competition affect its service differentiation strategy in the provision of a full continuum of care.

Why you Need to Understand the Full Continuum of Care

Why you Need to Understand the Full Continuum of Care

The `Clinician's Illusion': More Evidence?

The utilization rates reported in communities that offer mental-health services to children were compared. In one community, the demonstration site of the Fort Bragg Demonstration Project, a full continuum of services were made available free of charge to residents with maximal availability of services. In the other communities, one of which offered a full continuum of services, Dutchess County, New York, services were provided for a fee and access was restricted. A much larger number of children were admitted to treatment and placed in out-of-home programs in the Fort Bragg Demonstration site, where no substantial difference in outcomes for continuum-treated as opposed to traditionally-treated children was observed. The argument is made that the utilization rates reflect that clinicians who work in communities who rapidly introduce a full continuum of care at no cost to the client are subject to the `Clinician's Illusion', the belief that all troubled children need mental-health treatment and will make no substantial improvements unless treated.

Collaborative development of a clinical pathway for congestive heart failure.

Bon Secours Hospital, a 304-bed community hospital in Grosse Pointe, MI, decided to target high-volume and high-cost DRGs for clinical process improvement. Working collaboratively with members of the medical staff, the cardiac team set out to improve outcomes by reducing the non-value-added costs and the variations in the treatment of patients with congestive heart failure (CHF). A comprehensive program of care for these patients, that included the full continuum of care, from prevention to maintenance, is being developed, using a clinical pathway to manage the acute phase of treatment.

Continuing/Life Care Facilities and the Continuum of Care

The proliferation of continuing/life care facilities in the United States in recent years holds the promise of providing retirees with a full continuum of care. This survey of continuing/life care facilities in the state of Florida was undertaken to ascertain if they indeed were providing the services necessary to fulfill this promise. The results indicate that only a small percentage of continuing/life care facilities offer all the services the authors believe necessary for a full continuum of care, with shelter care being the least frequently offered service.