International Policy Scan of Supports for Integrated Care: A Report from the North American Observatory on Health Systems and Policies
Integrated care aims to coordinate a patient’s care across community, primary and secondary care
settings and between different providers in health and social care settings to meet the care needs of
the population (Goodwin, Stein, and Amelung 2021). There is widespread interest in pursuing
integration to develop responsive, appropriate, and efficient health services that provide usercentered care and/or to drive cost efficiencies through improved care pathways (Ham and Curry 2011;
Goodwin 2016). We consider integrated care as a set of services that are coherent and co-ordinated
planned, managed and delivered to individual service users across a range of organizations and by a
range of cooperating professionals (Van Raak 2003). Ontario is pursuing a whole systems approach
to integration through a reorganization into Ontario Health Teams (OHTs) where hospitals, doctors,
and allied health providers work as a coordinated team to provide responsive, appropriate, and
efficient health services. This report compares and characterizes integrated care reforms across four
international comparators to identify promising policy supports for the implementation of integrated
care initiatives in Ontario.