Integrated care delivery

Measuring care quality by sector alone fails to capture how people receive care. As ageing  populations and chronic conditions rise, patients interact with multiple providers, increasing the risk of fragmented and poor quality care. 

To support international benchmarking of integrated care quality, the OECD, with its Member States, has developed new indicators. By focusing on a one-year time frame, mortality, readmission, and post-discharge prescription rates assess how well hospitals integrate with other care settings. Data collections in 2020–21 and 2022–23 established benchmarking indicators, leveraging electronic health records and linking six years of administrative data. 

These indicators are now routinely collected, featured in Health at a Glance, and are available in OECD Explorer.

The OECD is refining indicator definitions to expand its integrated care portfolio, tracking vulnerable individuals in long-term care to better understand their healthcare use. 

Across the OECD, people are ageing. By 2050, more than one in four people is projected to be 65 years or older. A considerable share will require long-term care, receiving care from both hospitals and long-term care facilities.

To capture these care patterns, the OECD, together with its Member States, launched a new data collection in 2024. This third data collection introduced two new indicator sets, measuring readmissions and mortality after hospital discharge to long-term care facilities for both all-cause and hip fractures admission. As the first large-scale international comparison of its kind, this initiative shifts the focus from hospital-centric care to the complex needs of older individuals requiring both curative and long-term care.

Care fragmentation is a major issue for people with complex health needs, such as those with chronic conditions, who rely on multiple providers across different settings. Without proper care integration, people may overuse uncoordinated services, leading to poorer experiences and increased costs -  exceeding EUR 4 000 per patient.

To address this, countries are adopting integrated care models that ensure continuous, co ordinated and high-quality care. These models aim to prevent and manage chronic conditions while improving health outcomes, patient experience, cost efficiency, workforce well-being and equity.