Intergrated Care

Integrated Care
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Integrated Care
From the video, integrated care is an approach in health care whereby health care professionals form collaborations as well as communications about patient care to offer a more comprehensive plan of treatment for patients with multiple health concerns. For instance, a patient with both diabetes and bipolar disorder can get professional assistance for her conditions from one place. Integrated care can take place fully in one health facility. In case the healthcare professionals are not in one common place, then communication between them makes taking care of the patient much easier and better as they make consultations on the best option of care would suit the patient. The approach reduces the hustle of a patient with multiple conditions from having to book appointments from different specialists as they may sometimes end up not getting treatment for all their concerns (National Council for Behavioral Health, 2015). Also, the approach creates a wide network of different health professionals (Curtis, & Christian, 2012). Therefore, integrated care practice is the best practical approach to ensuring the different conditions patients are suffering from rbeing treated.
Integrated care is indeed a practical way of improving the general health of a patient. I plan to integrate the approach in a professional context to improve the general health outcome of my patients. I will make sure that as I am at work, I have the contacts of various specialists who can assist me in giving the best care to my patients.

For instance, if I encounter a patient with more than one health condition that needs care from different health professionals, I will do my role and provide primary care. Then, I will contact a specialist on the condition the patient could be suffering from to give me the best advice on the approach to take on the patient.
In conclusion, integrated care is an approach that health care providers should embrace. It has numerous benefits both on the patient side as well as on the health care providers. For example, a patient will be able to get the best care which is readily accessible and reduce the overall cost of healthcare (APA, 2018). Similarly, healthcare providers will benefit by learning more on the best care to offer to a patient on conditions they have not been professionally trained to tackle since the information will be obtained from specialists (Funderburk et al., 2010).
References
American Psychological Association (APA) Integrated Health Care. (n.d.). Retrieved October 6, 2018, from https://www.apa.org/health/integrated-health-care.aspxCurtis, R., & Christian, E. (Eds.). (2012). Integrated care: Applying theory to practice. Taylor & Francis.
Funderburk, J. S., Sugarman, D. E., Maisto, S. A., Ouimette, P., Schohn, M., Lantinga, L., … & Strutynski, K. (2010). The description and evaluation of the implementation of an integrated healthcare model. Families, Systems, & Health, 28(2), 146
National Council for Behavioral Health. (2015, August 25).What is integrated care? (Video file).Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=17&v=S-029Yf7AYM