Origins of Multidisciplinary Care
The concept of multidisciplinary care for complex or rare diseases is not new, nor specific to the field of vascular anomalies. The origin of interdisciplinary healthcare teams is generally traced back to military models of healthcare developed during World War II.8Successful implementation of multidisciplinary teams during wartime led to subsequent multidisciplinary team development in the fields of surgery, rehabilitation, burn injury, and mental health care. Development of more modern interdisciplinary healthcare teams in the US came out of various social movements and helped establish multidisciplinary care as beneficial for both patients and health professionals.8–11 A major impetus to the development of modern multidisciplinary teams came from the development of new healthcare delivery models such as healthcare maintenance organizations (HMOs) in the 1990s, encouraged also by increased fiscal pressures on hospital systems.8 In more recent years, there has been increased support for development of multidisciplinary care teams, based on recommendations from the Institute of Medicine and legislation from the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010.5