Glossary: F

The discipline for the provision of comprehensive and continuing health care to individuals in the context of their family and community. Its scope encompasses all ages and both sexes. Providers often include generalist practitioners or family medicine doctors, physician’s assistants, family nurses, and other health professionals.

The entry point into the health care system at the interface between services and community; when the first level of care satisfies several quality criteria, it is called primary care. See: primary care.

(a) Coexistence of units, facilities or programmes that are not integrated into the health network; (b) the lack of service coverage of the entire range of promotion, prevention, diagnosis, treatment, rehabilitation and palliative care services; (c) the lack of coordination among services in different platforms of care; or (d) the lack of continuity of services over time.

The extent to which key support functions and activities such as financing, human resources, strategic planning, information management, marketing and quality assurance and improvement are coordinated across all units in a system.