25. Financial Incentives to Integrate Care in Europe

In the last two decades, health policy makers in Europe are intensely seeking to integrate health services in order to increase efficiency in the organization and delivery of care and address escalating healthcare budget pressures. This expectation is based on increasing evidence that integrated care (IC) is likely to improve outcomes in terms of health, quality of care, and patient experience at lower cost as it facilitates linkage and coordination of services of different providers along the continuum of care. In the era of personalized medicine and genomics, IC has been characterized as “humanomics” because (i) it incorporates treatment based on personal need, preferences, and capability, (ii) it interacts with the context in which it is implemented, and (iii) its success depends highly on human behavior. As preferences and behavior at individual and organizational level are influenced not only by intrinsic motivation but also by financial motives, financial incentives are one of the main prerequisites for integrating care.