OBJECTIVES: To determine the clinical and economic effects and components of integrated care programs to improve management of chronic diseases in Europe on the basis of systematic reviews and meta-analyses. METHODS: A systematic literature review was performed. Medline, Scopus, EMBASE, WHOLIS and The Cochrane Library of Systematic Reviews for English and German language articles were searched for English- and German language articles from 2002 to 2012. Articles were included if an explicit research question was defined, focussed on care that involves more than one provider, reported clinical outcomes of care, and employed acceptable experimental or quasi-experimental study designs as defined by the Cochrane Effective Practice and Organization of Care Group. More than 50% of included primary studies had to be RCT’s and conducted in Europe. RESULTS: The search identified 25.135 articles, 889 titles were included for further screening and 409 abstracts for the article review step. A total of 308 abstracts did not meet the inclusion/exclusion criteria, leaving a pool of 101 articles for full text evaluation. Overall, 10 systematic reviews were identified, with 238 primary studies, 129 conducted in Europe. The sample sizes from the included primary studies from Europe revealed 20 to 15.343 patients with a mean of 514. Chronic conditions investigated were: heart failure, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, diabetes, and cancer. Of the outcomes more frequently studied, integrated care appeared to improve quality of life and reduce hospitalization. But often results remained inconclusive. CONCLUSIONS: Providing a conclusion across the different chronic conditions is not possible. Therefore, only disease specific conclusions can be drawn. Our review suggests that integrated care might be advantageous for specified groups of patients, e.g. heart failure. Furthermore, it remains unclear which specific component is associated with the highest benefit for patients across chronic conditions.