Continuity of care

Continuity of care is coordinated, consistent healthcare across visits, clinicians, and stages of life. It connects information, relationships, and care plans over time.

Informational continuity: The use of relevant health information from earlier care to guide later decisions. It carries diagnoses, preferences, and treatment history between encounters.
Primary care: First-contact, ongoing healthcare that addresses common health needs and coordinates further care. Primary care often anchors continuing relationships and referral pathways.
Patient safety: The prevention of avoidable harm to patients during healthcare. Reliable information and handoffs can prevent errors caused by gaps in care.
Fragmentation of care: Disjointed healthcare in which services, information, or responsibility fail to connect. Fragmentation is the opposite pattern continuity is intended to reduce.
Usual source of care: A clinician or setting a person commonly turns to for ongoing healthcare. It offers a practical measure of stable access, but not every dimension of continuity.
Relational continuity: An ongoing therapeutic relationship between a patient and one or more healthcare professionals. Stable relationships give care a consistent human point of reference.
Patient handoff: The transfer of responsibility and essential information for a patient's care between professionals or teams. A safe handoff protects continuity when responsibility changes.
Medication reconciliation: The comparison of medication lists across care transitions to identify and resolve discrepancies. It addresses medication changes that are easily lost between clinicians.
Access to health care: The ability to obtain appropriate healthcare services when they are needed. Access concerns reaching care; continuity concerns how care connects over time.
Continuity of care index: A measure of how concentrated a patient's visits are among healthcare providers over time. It quantifies provider concentration, while leaving informational and management continuity less visible.

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