The Canterbury Clinical Network will work with community and primary care providers to support the delivery of Integrated Family Health Services (IFHS).

The goal of IFHS is to bring to bear the right combination of health and social services to meet the needs of individuals and families in a given community. 'Integration' means the various services are coordinated to achieve the best outcome for the individuals and families, whilst achieving an appropriate balance between the following:

• Convenience to the patient and their families (location, seamless delivery of the various service inputs)
• Efficiency of each service in the mix and efficiency and effectiveness of the overall integrated service mix
• Economies of scale
• Collegial support affected by distributed model
• Best overall outcome for the the individual and families.

Two configurations are planned:

• Single integrated family health centres (IFHC) at the heart of a given community; and
• Services centred on the enrolled populations of geographically contiguous clusters of general practices (i.e. 'clusters') representing 15,000+ people.

A 'cluster' (also called network or hub) is defined as health and social service providers working as an integrated team with the enrolled population of several general practices within a loosely geographically contiguous area. The health and social providers may be connected via a shared health record, but may not necessarily be co-located in one building. (See also Shared Care.)

Establishment of, and participation in, IFHCs and clusters will be voluntary, evolutionary and actively supported.