[Methodologic note on the collaboration between practitioners in the ambulatory care sector]

There are still few studies about the collaboration between ambulatory practitioners (physicians and paramedical services). Nevertheless, the interest seems to be growing for this aspect of health care; it involves indeed basic organisational problems as well as fundamental questions about quality of care and its economic implication. A basic problem is rooted in the inevitable contradiction of the efforts towards a highly qualified-i.e. specialised-care on the one hand and those towards continuity on the other hand.