eMJA: Do Team Care Arrangements address the real issues in the management of chronic disease?

Models Of Care

Do Team Care Arrangements address the real issues in the management of chronic disease?

Paul A Hartigan, Tuck Meng Soo and Marjan Kljakovic

MJA 2009; 191 (2): 99-100

Introduction

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Can Team Care Arrangements serve their purpose?

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Patient summaries

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Competing interests

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Author details

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References

Abstract

Care plans are a decade-old program for coordinating care of patients with chronic illness.
The program currently involves Team Care Arrangements (TCAs), which require all providers to agree on all management decisions contained in the plan. By contrast, conventional referral processes leave it to providers to exercise their judgement about the other providers to be involved.
TCA requirements make coordination unwieldy and lack an evidentiary basis.
More importantly, although care plans were introduced to encourage general practitioners to shift from an episodic to a global approach, they do not necessarily do this.
The care plan objective would be better served by the development of comprehensive patient summaries.

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