Publications

Integrated Care in the ACT Region: Consumer perspectives

Published: 2024

The ACT has sought more integrated health care for several decades as can be seen through the many health related policies and frameworks. Across Australia and internationally, better integration of health services serves to improve consumer experience of care, provide high quality care for the increasing number of people with long-term health conditions, and overcome fragmentation between services and parts of the health and social services system. The increasing proportion of people in our community with long-term health conditions has increased the urgency to develop ways of achieving integrated care for people with chronic and complex health needs.

What is integrated care?

Despite the interest in integrated care, there is currently no agreed definition of what integrated care is, and no consistent approach to its implementation. This is partly due to the different perspectives and purposes of the stakeholders involved in designing, funding, regulating, and providing services within health care systems.

Because the overarching aim of the project is to elicit consumer experiences of integrated care, HCCA uses the consumer-led definition of integrated care established by the National Voices UK and recognised by the World Health Organisation:

“My care is planned with people who work together to understand me and my carer(s), put me in control, coordinate and deliver services to achieve my best outcomes.”

Care can be integrated within the health care system and between health and community or social service systems. The latter aspect is essential to enabling better health and wellbeing for people complex and chronic condition health conditions.

This is the second report from the HCCA project Integrated Care: Consumer Perspectives in the ACT Region. The aims of this project were to:

1. Gain an insight into what “integrated care” means to consumers with complex and chronic conditions in the Canberra region;
2. Understand the experiences of consumers with complex health circumstances and chronic conditions in accessing and managing their health care, including during the COVID-19 pandemic; and
3. Identify what consumers in the ACT region need the health system to integrate to allow them to make managing their health and wellbeing easier. The findings of the first report looked at the providers’ perspectives about what was needed for consumers to manage their complex and chronic conditions.

Use the ‘Download Document’ button to read the full report.