Integrated Care: Reflections on Change in Health Services

Over the past 20 years, integrated care has been seen as a solution to health service issues, but few innovative advances have been made. Axel Kaehne argues that it is time to re-evaluate how we investigate care integration and offers a fresh perspective on care integration that challenges conventional thinking.

Format: Hardback
Length: 144 pages
Publication date: 15 April 2022
Publisher: Emerald Publishing Limited

Over the past two decades, integrated care has been heralded as a panacea for numerous challenges plaguing health services, including inadequate coordination between services, cumbersome organizational boundaries, disrupted patient journeys, and escalating healthcare costs. Despite an abundance of research, the field has witnessed limited innovative advancements in recent years. In particular, prevailing implementation practices and research in integrated care seem to be heavily influenced by health science perspectives, disregarding approaches from other disciplines.

Axel Kaehne contends that it is high time to reassess our approach to investigating care integration. He implores us to critically interrogate our assumptions about integrated care as a managerial, organizational, and behavioral endeavor. This represents a significant departure from traditional notions of integration in health and social care. Kaehne unveils the implicit assumptions we make when managing and transforming health services, presenting a novel perspective on care integration while encouraging readers to challenge long-standing research orthodoxies. This diverse conceptual and theoretical approach yields unexpected insights for those willing to embrace a fresh perspective.

Dimension: 229 x 152 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781801179799