Integrated care pathways: disease-specific or process-specific?

Background/Aim: conventional teaching on integrated care pathways (ICP) suggests that they have to be specific both to a particular setting and to a specific diagnosis. We wished to explore the potential for a generic process-based care pathway. Study design: we evaluated three different, disease-specific ICPs in use on a neurological rehabilitation unit to identify prompts common to and differing between them. Variance types and goal outcomes in all three diagnostic groups were compared. Results: 93% of prompts on the care pathway were common to all three diagnostic groups. The prompts that differed were unique to each diagnostic group and provided important guidelines about management. Conclusion: in neurorehabilitation, where the process of multidisciplinary care is well defined, it is possible to develop a process-based ICP. Process-based ICPs may not be unique to rehabilitation but may also be relevant to other settings in which patients with differing diagnoses share similar needs.