Over the past decade, awareness has grown that transitions of care are particularly vulnerable periods in the patient's journey. Evidence suggests that during these transitions vital information often is lost, distorted or misinterpreted.1–3 When transitions between the primary care setting and the inpatient hospital are less than optimal, the repercussions can be far-reaching—including hospital readmission, and avoidable morbidity and even mortality. This supplement of BMJ Quality and Safety reports the findings of the HANDOVER Project, initiated in 2008 as the first multi-year, multi-million-euro effort to improve handovers at the interface between the hospital and the home.4 ,5

Six European nations (Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, UK, Spain, and Sweden) participated in the Project, along with researchers from the United States and Australia. The aims entailed optimising the continuum of clinical care between primary care and the hospital to reduce unnecessary treatment, medical errors, and avoidable harm. Specific objectives included identifying and studying best practices, creating standardised approaches to handover communication, and measuring their effectiveness in terms of impacts on patients and health care costs. The Project was initiated by a group of health services researchers and clinicians from the six participating nations. Countries were specifically selected to represent different European systems for the organisation and funding of healthcare. The HANDOVER Project was funded by the European Union's (EU's) Seventh Framework Programme (FP7),6 which brings EU research initiatives under a common roof to foster growth in research and innovation through competitiveness, training programmes, and funding to support regional and cross-national collaborations.7

Good Handovers – Facilitators and Barriers

The HANDOVER Project included research that identified attributes of handovers that facilitate or impede the transition of care and directly or indirectly affect patient outcomes. This supplement presents detailed descriptions of the work of investigators, participants and stakeholders to define the scope of handovers between the …