Table 1.
Study characteristics of included peer-reviewed articles (n = 55), divided by the five groups identified based on their use of the ‘continuity of care’ concept
| First author, year | Study type | Condition | Locationa | Main focus of the article |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Group 1: Reflecting a change in stages or systems of care | ||||
| Robles, 2004 [28] | Review | Chronic diseases | Americas | A public health framework for chronic disease prevention and control |
| Mayige,2011 [25] | Review | NCDs | Tanzania | NCD services |
| Pakdeeprom, 2012 [30] | Cross-sectional survey | Chronic diseases | Thailand | Transition from paediatric to adult care system for patients with chronic illnesses |
| Ichiho, 2013 [23] | Review and assessment | NCDs | Federated States of Micronesia | Systems perspective on NCDs, including diabetes |
| Armstrong, 2014 [35] | Case study | Tuberculosis | India | Treating drug-resistant tuberculosis in a low-intensity chronic conflict |
| McGuire, 2014 [27] | Review | Cardiovascular diseases | Low-resource settings | Medical devices and diagnostics for cardiovascular diseases |
| Weigl, 2014 [26] | Review | NCDs and chronic diseases | Low-resource settings | Point-of-care diagnostics and their impact on care in the age of the NCD and chronic disease epidemic |
| Doocy, 2015 [33] | Cross-sectional survey | Chronic diseases | Jordan | Prevalence and care-seeking for chronic diseases among Syrian refugees |
| Knaul, 2015 [24] | Review | Breast cancer | Mexico | Example of breast cancer care to illustrate effective universal health coverage along the chronic disease continuum and across health systems functions |
| Lee, 2015 [32] | Commentary | HIV | LMICs | Transition from paediatric to adolescent to adult healthcare settings for young HIV patients |
| Rabkin, 2016 [34] | Review | HIV/chronic diseases | LMICs | Lessons from HIV to address chronic diseases in protracted emergencies |
| Silverman-Retana, 2016 [29] | Cross-sectional survey | Diabetes mellitus/ hypertension | Mexico | Exploring transition of diabetes and hypertension care among male prisoners |
| Nobrega, 2017 [31] | Qualitative study | Chronic diseases | Brazil | Evaluating continuity of care for children and adolescents with chronic diseases in the healthcare network |
| Group 2: Mentioning continuity or lack of continuity without a detailed definition | ||||
| Greenberg, 2002 [53] | Commentary | Chronic diseases | LMICs | A new perspective on global health assistance given health transitions and rise of chronic illnesses |
| Polanczyk, 2009 [54] | Review | Coronary artery disease | Brazil | Contemporary management and future perspectives for coronary artery disease |
| Suwanno, 2009 [50] | Cross-sectional survey | Heart failure | Thailand | Predicting health status of a patient with heart failure |
| Ramli, 2010 [36] | Review | Chronic heart failure | Malaysia | Management of chronic heart failure in primary care |
| van Olmen, 2011 [55] | Commentary | Chronic diseases | LICs | Self-management facilitated by expert patient networks and smartphone technology |
| Lund, 2012 [51] | Review | Mental health | South Africa | Mental health services |
| Bhojani, 2013 [37] | Qualitative in-depth interviews | Diabetes mellitus | India | Patients perspective on managing diabetes care |
| Dasgupta, 2014 [52] | Commentary | Chronic malnutrition | India | Examining the burden of severe malnutrition (acute and chronic) and whether programmatic responses are consistent with epidemiologic realities |
| Ravaghi, 2014 [38] | Qualitative SSIs | Diabetes mellitus | Iran | Provider’s perspective on specialised care programme for diabetes |
| Atwine, 2015 [47] | Qualitative FGDs | Diabetes mellitus | Uganda | Health-seeking behaviour and use of traditional medicine among persons with type 2 diabetes |
| Hussein, 2015 [39] | Review | Diabetes mellitus | Malaysia | Status of diabetes care and management |
| Mahomed, 2015 [49] | Quasi-experimental study | Chronic diseases | South Africa | A multifaceted intervention to improve the quality of nurse clinical documentation for chronic patients at primary care clinics |
| Maimela, 2015 [40] | Qualitative study | Chronic diseases | South Africa | Perceptions and perspectives of patients and healthcare providers on chronic disease management |
| Malan, 2015a [41] | Qualitative interviews and FGDs | NCDs | South Africa | A situational analysis of training for behaviour change counselling for primary care providers |
| Malan, 2015b [42] | Qualitative study | NCDs | South Africa | Experiences of primary care providers after a training programme to offer brief behaviour change counselling on risk factors for NCDs |
| Puspitasari, 2015 [43] | Qualitative in-depth SSIs | NCDs | Indonesia | Challenges in the management of chronic NCDs by community pharmacists |
| Sellappans, 2015 [48] | Qualitative FGDs | Chronic diseases | Malaysia | Challenges faced by primary care physicians in a teaching hospital when prescribing for patients with chronic diseases |
| Wang, 2015 [44] | Household survey | Chronic NCDs | Malawi | Health-seeking behaviour and the related household out-of-pocket expenditure for chronic NCDs |
| Khodaveisi, 2017 [45] | Randomised clinical trial | Multiple sclerosis | Iran | Effect of continuous care on the lifestyle of patients with multiple sclerosis |
| Pelcastre-Villafuerte, 2017 [46] | Ethnographical review | Diseases among the elderly | Mexico | A comprehensive healthcare model, interculturally appropriate, designed to meet the needs of indigenous older adults |
| Group 3: Researching continuity of care in HIV/AIDS programmes and scaling them up to support NCD management | ||||
| Rabkin, 2011a [61] | Commentary | HIV/NCDs | LMICs | Leveraging HIV programmes to support NCD services |
| Rabkin, 2011b [62] | Commentary | HIV/NCDs | LMICs | Leveraging HIV programmes to support NCD services |
| Rabkin, 2012a [64] | Commentary | HIV/NCDs | LICs | Leveraging HIV programmes to support NCD services |
| Rabkin, 2012b [63] | Assessments and pilot intervention | HIV/diabetes mellitus | Ethiopia and Swaziland | Leveraging HIV programmes to support diabetes services |
| Fujita, 2015 [58] | Collaborative case study | HIV | 6 Asia and Pacific countries | HIV service delivery model |
| Mkwinda, 2016 [56] | Qualitative design | HIV | Malawi | Exploring the needs of people living with HIV concerning care received from primary caregivers and palliative care nurses |
| Panditrao, 2015 [60] | Cross-sectional survey | HIV | India | Barriers to continued care among HIV-infected women who were previously enrolled in a private sector preventing mother-to-child transmission programme |
| Kruk, 2016 [59] | Discrete choice experiment | HIV | Ethiopia and Mozambique | Identifying healthcare characteristics preferred by HIV-infected women to promote treatment for a lifetime |
| Ahonkhai, 2017 [57] | Cross-sectional survey | HIV | Nigeria | Patient-centred medical home to provide HIV care |
| Group 4: Researching continuity of care in NCD management | ||||
| Arevian, 2005 [65] | Case study | Diabetes mellitus | Lebanon | Collaborative practice model delivering care for diabetes mellitus patients |
| Wei, 2008a [67] | Case study | Diabetes mellitus | China | Diabetes management programme and association of continuity of care with clinical outcomes |
| Hanafi, 2015 [68] | Retrospective cohort study | Hypertension | Malaysia | Impact of personal continuity of care on blood pressure control in a university-based primary care practice |
| Shi, 2015a [73] | Case-control study | Hypertension /diabetes | China | Impact of an integrated care delivery intervention on healthcare seeking and outcomes for chronically ill patients (i.e. with hypertension or diabetes) |
| Shi, 2015b [71] | Case-comparison study | Hypertension /diabetes | China | Examining which of the dominant primary care delivery models (i.e. public community health centres model, ‘gate-keeper’ CHC model or hospital-owned CHC model) was most effective in enhancing access to and quality of care for patients with chronic diseases (i.e. with hypertension or diabetes) |
| Tang, 2015 [66] | Study design | Hypertension | China | Study design of a clustered randomised controlled trial to build and evaluate an integrated healthcare system for chronic patients |
| Wei, 2015 [72] | Multistage stratified random survey | Chronic diseases | China | Changes in perspectives of patients on quality of primary care following the introduction of health system reforms |
| Mwangome, 2016 [75] | Qualitative in-depth interview | HIV/diabetes mellitus | Tanzania | Perceptions, experiences and practice of care for HIV and diabetes from the perspective of patients and family caregivers |
| Ye, 2016 [70] | Cohort study | Hypertension | China | Effect of continuity of care on health-related quality of life in adult patients with hypertension |
| Mwangome, 2017 [74] | Qualitative study | Diabetes mellitus | Tanzania | Perception of health providers on diabetes care provision |
| Zhang, 2017 [69] | Clustered randomised controlled trial | Hypertension | China | Effects of integrated chronic care models on hypertension outcomes and spending |
| Group 5: Measuring continuity of care with validated questionnaires | ||||
| Wei, 2008b [76] | Cross-sectional survey | Diabetes mellitus | China | Continuity of care in a community diabetes programme |
| Vargas, 2017 [77] | Cross-sectional survey | Chronic diseases | Columbia and Brazil | Patient perceptions of continuity of healthcare and associated factors |
CHC community health center, FGDs focus group discussions, LICs low-income countries, LMICs low- and middle-income countries, NCDs non-communicable diseases, SSIs semi-structured interviews
aLocation could be: a country or a region or a setting