Mobilization of the interdisciplinary critical care team at home and abroad.

Already it is clear that managed care organizations seek delivery innovations that can move homecare beyond being a posthospitalization add-on to becoming a true alternative to hospitalization. Throughout its history, home health care nurses have epitomized Florence Nightingale's philosophy that nurses are "messengers of health as well as ministers of disease." With the development of more sophisticated models of interdisciplinary practice in high-tech homecare, nurses are in a position to help create a health care delivery system that in a sense brings people back to the future. The natural setting of the home is the best place to provide holistic care, it is where patients overwhelmingly prefer to be cared for, and it is affordable. Indeed, affordability has become the operant word, worldwide, for a health care delivery system that can continue to meet the growing demands of the future.