COORDINATION OF CARE
Approximately 4.2 million people aged 15 years or over (24%) saw three or more health professionals in the past year for a single condition. Of these people, 61% reported that a health professional had helped to coordinate their health care, predominantly GPs (54%) and medical specialists (31%). People reported that this coordination of care had helped to a large extent in 71% of cases, and to some extent in 27% of cases.
About 11% of people who had seen three or more health professionals in the past year for a single condition reported that there had been issues caused by a lack of communication between the health professionals. People aged 75 years and over reported the least instances of this (5%).
There were more issues caused by a lack of communication between health professionals for people who rated their health as fair or poor (14%) than people who rated their health as good or better (9%).
See Table 5.4 for more detail of communication around coordination of care.