Urology and Andrology

The use of multiple clinicians

Track 4: The use of multiple clinicians

Continuity of care is the extent to which a series of health care services is experienced as connected and coherent and is consistent with a patient’s health needs and personal circumstances.1 As patients increasingly receive care from multiple professionals and organizations, improving continuity of care has become a research priority. Although continuity of care is understood differently across health disciplines, an interdisciplinary review of concepts and measures of continuity of care found all disciplines would recognize 3 types of continuity.

Continuity of care among different clinicians refers to consistent and coherent care management and good measures are needed. We conducted a met summary of qualitative studies of patients’ experience with care to identify measurable elements that recur over a variety of contexts and health conditions as the basis for a generic measure of management continuity.