In particular, improving chronic illness management has been attracting increasing interest by health care providers and government agencies, since the average chronic patient entering the primary care system is not receiving an optimal quality of care [ 3].
Given that 60% of the participants surveyed felt that they did not have sufficient time to care for an advanced cancer patient, the use of dedicated PC staff integrated into the ED may, in some instances, be an important way of achieving optimal quality of care.
Through close coordination and interaction between outpatient, inpatient and rehabilitative treatment double examinations could be avoided and the patient had an optimal quality of care offered.
Therefore, programs that take a more holistic approach to managing health by focusing on achieving optimal quality of care and living a healthy lifestyle are needed.
It is possible that physicians in some countries that have high-quality primary healthcare are more critical of their own work than physicians in countries with less optimal quality of care.
This was borne out by the qualitative comments made in the open-ended questions, with some nurses indicating that perceived disrespect from patients influenced their ability to provide optimal quality of care.
Until now, the contribution made by service characteristics and the management of continence at both the service and personal levels to attain optimal quality of care for older people with UI has not been addressed.
It is, thus, important to realize that a lack in training of skills in history taking and physical examination of patients with MSK complaints might have a serious negative effect on the life perspective of patients and action should be taken to ensure optimal quality of care [ 15, 16].
Delivery of high quality palliative care: GPs are expected to deliver optimal quality of palliative care which could be achieved by three instruments suggested by the CPPPC: (1) the 'palliative care pathway'-file, (2) the Palliative Performance Scale (PPSv2) [ 26 ], and (3) a manual on primary palliative care in Belgium, all available at www.pro-spinoza.be in Dutch and French.
