Chronic care often is used interchangeably with long-term care in reference to nursing homes and home care agencies. A 21st Century Challenge, a report published by The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The term chronic care refers to a continuum of care required over a prolonged period of time for people who have lost, or never acquired, functional abilities. Dorothy Rice, part of the team at the Institute for Health and Aging at the University of California, San Francisco that wrote the report, emphasized that chronic care refers to fragmented services that the chronically ill need. Chronic care can include medical care, rehabilitative care, and personal assistance for conditions that last for years.
Chronic conditions are incurable.