The acute and long-term care interface. Integrating the continuum

Acute and long-term care traditionally have been distinctly different health care services, separated by reimbursement mechanisms, types and numbers of providers, and overall approach to the management of chronic illness. Considerable effort has been made of late, primarily due to financial incentives, to integrate these two levels of care into a "seamless" continuum. Barriers to such an integration process must first be identified. Physician and other health care providers will need to develop the tools and resources necessary to manage frail, chronically ill patients in settings other than the traditional acute care hospital, as well as to develop information systems that allow communication to flow easily between all levels of care. As subacute or transitional care becomes a central piece of a health care delivery system, those tools become critical to the provision of quality, integrated care.