Integrated Delivery Systems Now or .... ? ?

LEATT, PINK AND GUERRIERE provide a comprehensive paper that describes the nature of integrated healthcare, the rationale for it, the Canadian state of the art with respect to integrated healthcare, lessons learned and where we go from here. The reader might conclude from this paper that an integrated delivery system (IDS) is the natural next step that we have to undertake in developing the future of the Canadian healthcare system. The authors of this commentary challenge the supposition that an IDS is the next phase of our health system evolution. Furthermore, we raise some questions regarding the value that IDSs in Canada would provide beyond what could already be attained under regional health authorities (RHAs). We will argue that the next decade needs to be a period of information integration, and of primary health care reform, where organizational structure and corporate decision-making are reformed to reflect partnerships between healthcare providers and managers.