BACKGROUND: Forming partnerships is a prominent strategy used to promote integrated service delivery across health and social service systems. Evidence about the collaboration process upon which partnerships evolve has rarely been addressed in an integrated-care setting. This study explores the longitudinal …

Informal caregivers of frail elderly people often perform a substantial number of care tasks over a prolonged period of time [1]. By definition, informal care is nonprofessional and unpaid and is provided by family members, partners or close friends [2]. Frail elderly people suffer from age-related problems …

The purpose of this study was to describe the interventions implemented in a quality improvement programme to improve transitional care and evaluate its effectiveness in reducing bottlenecks as perceived by professionals and improving chronically ill adolescents’ experiences with care delivery.

Background: A quality improvement collaborative is an intensive project involving a combination of implementation strategies applied in a limited “breakthrough” time window. After an implementation project, it is generally difficult to sustain its success. In the current study, sustainability was described …

Background: Because of an expected shrinking supply of medical doctors for hospitalist posts, an increased emphasis on efficiency and continuity of care, and the standardization of many medical procedures, the role of hospitalist is increasingly allocated to physician assistants (PAs). PAs are nonphysician …

Patients in hospitals and nursing homes are at risk of the development of, often preventable, adverse events (AEs), which threaten patient safety. Guidelines for prevention of many types of AEs are available, however, compliance with these guidelines appears to be lacking. Besides general barriers that …