The Article in Brief

Toward an Ecosystemic Approach to Chronic Care Design and Practice in Primary Care

Hassan Soubhi, MD. PhD

This essay offers a new framework for thinking about care of chronically ill patients. It describes chronic care as what patients, family members, and health professionals do to achieve specific health results within the opportunities and limitations of the illness. In this framework, there is not a standardized approach to care of chronic illnesses. Instead, chronic care is a group response that adapts as the illness changes over time. Health professionals would develop new ways to recognize, value, and manage the group response to illness; new ways to document and learn from the changing nature of illness experiences; and new ways to build openness, trust, and group involvement to encourage learning and help participants respond to the changing illness process.