Patterns and Effects of Collaboration between Primary Care Providers and Medical Specialists in the Delivery of Integrated Health Care Services: a Scoping Review

Background Addressing current health challenges requires the integrated and continuous health care services. The collaboration between primary care providers (PCPs) and medical specialists other than general practice is the most common means of achieving this objective. The patterns and effect of collaborative working between different disciplines has a direct impact on the quality of integrated service delivery, which is critical to improving patient health outcomes. Objective To systematically review the characteristics of studies related to collaboration patterns between PCPs and medical specialists, contents of collaboration patterns and effects reported by the authors by using scoping review methods. Methods On September 3 in 2022, PubMed, EmBase, Web of Science, CNKI, and Wanfang Data Knowledge Service Platform were searched for literature related to collaboration between PCPs and medical specialists from inception to the date of search. The characteristics of literature, collaboration patterns and effe