TY - JOUR A1 - Hopfe, M. A1 - Prodinger, Birgit A1 - Bickenbach, J. E. A1 - Stucki, G. T1 - Optimizing health systems response to patient’s needs: An argument for the importance of functioning information JF - Disability and Rehabilitation N2 - Background: Current health systems are increasingly challenged to meet the needs of a growing number of patients living with chronic and often multiple health conditions. The primary outcome of care, it is argued, is not merely curing disease but also optimizing functioning over a person’s life span. According to the World Health Organization, functioning can serve as foundation for a comprehensive picture of health and augment the biomedical perspective with a broader and more comprehensive picture of health as it plays out in people’s lives. The crucial importance of information about patient’s functioning for a well-performing health system, however, has yet to be sufficiently appreciated. Methods: This paper argues that functioning information is fundamental in all components of health systems and enhances the capacity of health systems to optimize patients’ health and health-related needs. Results and conclusion: Beyond making sense of biomedical disease patterns, health systems can profit from using functioning information to improve interprofessional collaboration and achieve cross-cutting disease treatment outcomes. - Implications for rehabilitation - Functioning is a key health outcome for rehabilitation within health systems. - Information on restoring, maintaining, and optimizing human functioning can strengthen health system response to patients’ health and rehabilitative needs. - Functioning information guides health systems to achieve cross-cutting health outcomes that respond to the needs of the growing number of individuals living with chronic and multiple health conditions. - Accounting for individuals functioning helps to overcome fragmentation of care and to improve interprofessional collaboration across settings KW - Health systems KW - health service delivery KW - rehabilitation services KW - functioning information KW - patient’s needs KW - fragmentation of care Y1 - 2018 UR - https://doi.org/10.1080/09638288.2017.1334234 VL - 40 IS - 19 SP - 2325 EP - 2330 ER -