The relationship between integrated care and cancer patient experience: A scoping review of the evidence

- We investigated the relationship between integrated care and patient experience.
- We completed a scoping review of the available international literature.
- We identified three main approaches of integrated care services.
- Patient experience dimensions were related to integrated care.

BackgroundHealth policy documents underscore the need to develop organizational models to optimize the integration of cancer care pathways around patient needs. Still, there is a lack of clarity about the meaning of integrated care as perceived by patients. The purpose of this study is to explore the relationship between the integration of cancer services and patients' experience.Materials and methodsWe completed a scoping review of the available literature searching PubMed, Embase and Scopus from the earliest date available in each database to February 2013.ResultsFrom 1760 bibliographic records, we identified 30 articles relevant for this analysis. Based on the qualitative conventional content analysis, we defined three integrated care approaches: “individual care provider”, “team care providers”, “mixed approach”, that impact on the following patient experience dimensions: patient satisfaction, quality of life, psychological and physical outcomes, continuity of care and empowerment.ConclusionsThis scoping review identifies important aspects of integration from patients' perspective and suggests that policy makers should consider how to best include patients' experience into the patient care pathway. Future perspectives include engaging patients, family members, caregivers and clinicians in an on-going dialogue and have them participate actively in developing, implementing and evaluating policies, services and programmes.