Background Even though there is general agreement that primary care is the linchpin of
effective health care delivery, to date no efforts have been made to systematically review the …

Background Health and social services provided at home are becoming increasingly
important. Hence, there is a need for information on home care in Europe. The objective of …

Introduction Hospital readmission rates are increasingly used for both quality improvement
and cost control. However, the validity of readmission rates as a measure of quality of …

Strong primary care systems are often viewed as the bedrock of health care systems that
provide high-quality care, but the evidence supporting this view is somewhat limited. We …

For many citizens primary care is the first point of contact with their health care system,
where most of their health needs are satisfied but also acting as the gate to the rest of the …

Background Scientific research has provided evidence on benefits of well developed
primary care systems. The relevance of some of this research for the European situation is …

Abstract Background The QUALICOPC (Quality and Costs of Primary Care in Europe) study
aims to evaluate the performance of primary care systems in Europe in terms of quality …

Background Many European countries share the goal of initiating or sustaining strong
primary health care systems. As a result, there is a demand for benchmarking information …

Background It is now widely accepted that the mixed effect and success rates of strategies to
improve quality and safety in health care are in part due to the different contexts in which the …

In light of the growing pressure that multiple chronic diseases place on health care systems,
we investigated whether strong primary care was associated with improved health outcomes …