Delivery and organization of diabetes care: integrated care

Abstract Services for diabetes mellitus are currently often delivered across primary, community and specialist services managed by separate organizations, driven by different priorities, outcome measures and budgets, and supported by incompatible IT systems. Integrated care has been proposed as a solution to improve the fragmentation of diabetes services. Integrated diabetes care is the coordination of services around a patient supported by integration of the health system. In essence, diabetes integration is the whole health community joining in partnership to own the health outcomes of people with diabetes in their local area. This article examines what integration means to diabetes care, ranging from generalist to specialist diabetes care.