Continuing Care

Continuing Care

Intermediate and Continuing Care

Intermediate care comprises strategies which allow early discharge from acute care, prevent admission or re-admission to acute care and avoid bed-blocking in both acute and long-term residential care. It encompasses a range of short-term options including rapid response, hospital at home, residential rehabilitation, supported discharge and day rehabilitation. Continuing Care is delivered on a long-term basis in a variety of settings and often includes an element of rehabilitation. Although these two types of care have distinct objectives, they are interrelated as changes in the supply of one type of care may affect demands for the other. In addition, from a patient perspective, intermediate and continuing care might be seen as part of the continuum of care options that are supplied to meet their needs. This book argues for consideration of intermediate and continuing care as part of the care continuum that provides integrated care adopting whole system approaches. This edited volume explores policy, practice and current issues in intermediate and continuing care. It will be of interest to allhealth and social care professionals involved in the provision and planning of care for older people. It falls in three parts: intermediate care, continuing care, and a shorter section on patient and public involvement and future directions.

Continuing Care in a Community Hospital

In this report on one of the first continuing care departments in the country, Dr. Harold Willard describes how he set up and directed a program in Thayer Hospital, Waterville, Maine, to provide the personnel and services necessary for improved care of patients with chronic illnesses. The community hospital, he maintains, must be the center for developing methods for health maintenance and care of the chronically ill. Two chapters by Dr. Stanislav Kasl provide a theoretical background for continuing care and discuss the importance of information from the behavioral sciences in the development and operation of continuing care programs.