Barriers to Integration of Primary Care into Emergency Care: Experiences in Germany

INTRODUCTION: In response to emergency department over-crowding primary care practitioners (PCPs) have been incorporated into care pathways to provide integrated care. We consider why a pilot project of PCP-led streaming in a German emergency department failed, the challenges encountered transplanting models between differing systems and cultures, and if the concept constitutes integrated care. THEORY AND METHODS: The original design was a mixed methods data gather around PCP-streaming of non-urgent self-referrers in an emergency department. RESULTS: The demand for the PCP-streaming was low, which was at odds with pre-study estimates. The study was stopped prematurely without adequate data; this is an opinion-based article. DISCUSSION: A fundamental of emergency care is a central emergency department. An emergency department can be the fulcrum from which urgent inter-disciplinary hospital care is initiated and coordinated. Objective triage is fundamental to this and regional healthcare planning. With such fundamentals in place, PCP integration has the potential to facilitate and provide integrated care. Relevant elements of the Rainbow Model of Integrated Care frame the discussion. CONCLUSION: The key element deficient in each barrier to our project, yet present in successful studies, was normative integration.