The complexity of health care is increasing, associated with several factors including aging populations and expanding comorbidities, growth in options for health interventions and patients’ access to information from electronic and other media. Management of chronic conditions with high morbidity such as diabetes, cardiovascular disease, cancer, chronic pulmonary disease and depression constitutes a major burden of clinical care worldwide and an increasing problem for primary care because responsibility for chronic care shifts from hospitals to health professionals in primary care. Recently, there has been increasing attention focussed on another player/stakeholder in this quest to improve patient outcomes–the patient.
Part of the book: Primary Care in Practice