From “silos” to seamless healthcare: bringing hospitals and GPs back together again

Linda Mann, a Sydney GP, proposes ways of potentially enhancing patient care and reducing hospital stays, without increasing overall healthcare costs. Her suggested solutions include making it simpler for all healthcare practitioners involved in caring for the same patient to share (rather than not share) all patient information by applying the information technology of today (rather than tomorrow). Also, pooling some funding from state and federal sources could allow for further "seamless care" at areas of reasonable overlap between the current "silos" of hospital-based and community-based care.

[1]  J. Zajac.  The public hospital of the future , 2004, The Medical journal of Australia.

[2]  B. Barraclough,et al.  Multidisciplinary care for women with early breast cancer in the Australian context: what does it mean? , 2003, The Medical journal of Australia.

[3]  M. Chew,et al.  Chronic illness: the burden and the dream , 2003, The Medical journal of Australia.

[4]  A. Thomas,et al.  Critical incident reporting in UK intensive care units: a postal survey. , 2003, Journal of Evaluation In Clinical Practice.

[5]  Brian J. Smith,et al.  Cost comparison of at‐home treatment of deep venous thrombosis with low molecular weight heparin to inpatient treatment with unfractionated heparin , 2002, Internal medicine journal.

[6]  F. Cunningham.  Medicare: diagnosis and prognosis , 2000, The Medical journal of Australia.

[7]  J. Goldsmith,et al.  How will the Internet change our health system? , 2000, Health affairs.

[8]  J. Feussner,et al.  General internal medicine. , 1993, JAMA.

[9]  J. Goodman,et al.  Reforming the health care system. , 2005, The New England journal of medicine.