Developing integration around primary care: new professional roles and emerging professions in integrated care delivery

Continuity, comprehensiveness and coordination are key functions of primary care, as set out in the Declaration of Alma-Ata. Therefore, primary care systems must play a key role in integrating care not only within but also across health and social care systems. In addition, over the past decade, it has become apparent that primary care professionals must take on new roles and acquire new skills in order to tackle the challenges presented by the increase in the number of patients with chronic diseases and multimorbidity, and the associated need for coordinating services. In response, professional roles in primary care are expanding beyond their traditional boundaries, new types of education and job profiles combining health and social care as well as therapeutic skills have emerged to supplement traditional capacities in case and care management, and care navigation has emerged as a new function of primary care. Here, we argue that, in the future, an integrated health and social care workforce will have to draw as much on the emergence of these new professional profiles as on new roles for well-established primary care professions.