Evaluation of health care delivery integration: The case of the Russian Federation
This case study explores the current state of affairs within Russia's health system providing care for increasingly complex chronic conditions from the perspective of providers, namely physicians. A survey was developed by a group of experts and later distributed by the Russian center for public opinion research in August 2012. It focused on the interactions between providers at different levels of the health system often working in different organizational models such as primary care offices, polyspecialty clinics as well as hospitals. The survey focused on three areas crucial to integration, namely: teamwork, coordination and continuity of care. The results from the survey showed that the level of integration was low by nearly every measure across the different levels of the health system. The authors note that little emphasis has been placed on this issue since the 60/70's "when quite a lot of regulation was issued on district ...