Integrated care a solution in post-financial crisis years

This opening keynote address examines whether and how the pursuit of integrated care can enable health systems to achieve more cost-effective care to be delivered. Prof. Guus Schrijvers shows the opportunities for health care innovation in the coming years when less financial resources are available. He sees two scenarios: health care providers go back to their core business and forget that they are a link of a big integrated system. health care providers see their mission as a shared mission with other providers and to reach system efficiency and effectiveness. Prof. Schrijvers opts for the second option with a lot of theoretical and practical arguments. The paper concludes that the financial crisis, in tandem with demographic changes that place increasing demands on care, can only be addressed through policies that embrace integrated care despite the lack of ‘hard’ evidence for the effectiveness of the range of strategies that could be employed.