• search hit 3 of 3
Back to Result List

Optimizing health systems response to patient’s needs: An argument for the importance of functioning information

  • 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

Export metadata

Additional Services

Search Google Scholar
Metadaten
Author:M. Hopfe, Birgit Prodinger, J. E. Bickenbach, G. Stucki
URL:https://doi.org/10.1080/09638288.2017.1334234
Parent Title (English):Disability and Rehabilitation
Document Type:Article (peer reviewed)
Language:English
Publication Year:2018
Tag:Health systems; fragmentation of care; functioning information; health service delivery; patient’s needs; rehabilitation services
Volume:40
Issue:19
First Page:2325
Last Page:2330
Peer reviewed:Ja
faculties / departments:Fakultät für Angewandte Gesundheits- und Sozialwissenschaften
Dewey Decimal Classification:6 Technik, Medizin, angewandte Wissenschaften / 60 Technik / 600 Technik, Technologie