Continuity of care matters

Continuity of care refers to how an individual’s health care is connected over time.1 Whether continuity matters therefore depends on how important such connections are. Continuity is often of little immediate concern to young healthy people consulting with minor, acute problems. However, current care cannot be isolated from past and future care for people with more serious or chronic problems, who are the heaviest users of the service. For these patients, there is general agreement that continuity matters across all three of its core dimensions—informational, management, and relationship continuity (box 1).1 2 But there is less agreement about which dimensions matter most, or the right relation between continuity and access. We argue that an effective healthcare organisation has to embody all dimensions of continuity, alongside good access and systematic care.