Integrated care management.
Some clinicians are at the leading edge of good practice in the introduction of integrated care management (ICM) (Wilson, 1996) based on partnership, quality and driven by performance. The new Government White Paper (Department of Health, 1997) outlines proposals for integrated care with all care planners and providers working collaboratively. A number of health and social care organizations have worked collaboratively to develop care programmes based on patient-centred care. One of the vehicles is multidisciplinary pathways of care (MPCs) which is the risk management tool for monitoring jointly agreed quality and patient outcome criteria from the performance of planning and providing individual patient care. ICM views the multidisciplinary approaches to collaborating care delivery by activity, cost and quality, and using a process approach to problem- and outcome-based care delivery. Involving patients and their carers in determining the process and outcomes of care provides a route to better communication, patient and staff satisfaction and the overall quality of care. This article deals with the use of ICM through the monitoring system of multidisciplinary pathways of care (MPCs) as a tool for minimizing risk and improving the continuous quality improvement of patient care. MPCs are one of the components of ICM which need to incorporate clinical guidelines, protocols, interdisciplinary standards, evidenced-based practice and clinical outcomes which are continuously monitored across all sectors of care.