Rehabilitation ensures that individuals with a health condition can live as independently as possible and participate in meaningful life roles in their community. The stretch of rehabilitation care into the community often is weak, with primary health care delivering care to where individuals live and work. For meeting rehabilitation goals, a strong primary care system is paramount to guarantee effective referrals, follow-up care and care coordination. For primary care to function as a gateway to rehabilitation service delivery, an effective collaboration between general practitioners (GPs) and rehabilitation practitioners is demanded, with well-defined role-distributions and patient pathways.

There is no general agreement on how an effective collaboration between GPs or community care workers and rehabilitation practitioners is best achieved.

We aim to spotlight scientific evaluations on clarified roles, tasks and guidelines, in order to overcome fragmented care, leading to better support of those individuals in need of rehabilitation who are living in the community.

We welcome research on:
- interdisciplinary care networks in rehabilitation care in the community
- collaboration between GP and rehabilitation practitioners
- the role of GPs in the inter-professional rehabilitation care team
- GP as manager of the rehabilitation process and the community reintegration

We are specifically interested in research (quantitative, qualitative, or reviews; descriptive or confirmatory) on models to improve:
- inter-professional collaboration between GPs and rehabilitation practitioners
- transition between hospitals and the community setting in rehabilitation
- integration of rehabilitation into primary health care / community-based rehabilitation

Such models might include:
- referral systems for rehabilitation
- case management systems
- models to outreach specialized rehabilitation from institutional rehabilitation into the community
- models specifically designed for rural, peripheral areas or areas that are culturally distinct (e.g. in language)
- shared care models
- telerehabilitation

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Frontiers in Rehabilitation Sciences

Participating Journals

Impact