Continuity of healthcare for headache patients: a problem of communication between headache specialists and general practitioners

Abstract

The continuous care of headache patients, from headache centres to general practice, is a managerial problem that is still unsolved in Italy. In fact, if on the one hand patients do not usually go to headache centres because of poor information, on the other hand, if they do, they do not find their general practitioner (GP) sufficiently prepared to continue the management. In Sicily we have formed a dense network of headache centres that we will try to link on the Internet to deal with the problem of poor patients information and poor specialist consultation. We also have faced the problem of the continuous care, trying to overcome “the difficulties of comunication between specialists, GPs and patients” and “the difficulties of GPs in diagnostic work”, by simple instruments like the Italian version of ID–Migraine, a simple three–item questionnaire.