Can community and hospital medicine meet? A novel integrative care experience at Assuta University Medical Center

The ageing of the population, along with the rise in chronic complex illnesses, requires extensive interprofessional, individualized care, mainly in the community, but also in hospitals. Fragmentation results in suboptimal care, higher cost due to duplication and poor quality of care. Hence, collaboration between health systems is essential to prevent further complications and provide enhanced medical care to patients. Integrative care creates bridges between community and hospital health. Integration should be pursued at different levels within a system to facilitate the continuous, comprehensive, and coordinated delivery of services to individuals and populations. To be applied and to make a difference in patient care and outcome, its significance needs to be understood and embedded at the management level. Health systems should abandon familiar paradigms and collaborate with other health systems on the macro level. Several studies describe integrative care from its different aspects. Division of integration into levels: systemic to clinical, horizontal vs longitudinal and according to the degree of integration (from linkage to full integration). Maccabi Health Services is the first Israeli health organization to place an integrative care team at Assuta Hospital in Ashdod. The multiprofessional team, situated in the hospital, sees every Maccabi patient in the hospital. Through close communication and collaborative work with the hospital team – a shared continuity of the care plan is prepared. The team coordinates future care in the community from the hospital to ease the release process and improve outcomes.