Abstract
Introduction: The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) state that good quality primary healthcare improves health system responsiveness, makes healthcare more person-centered and can improve population health outcomes.
Research show that targeted preventive services, including care continuity and coordination to meet the person’s needs, can prevent acute complications, and reduce hospitalizations.
While interdisciplinary collaboration has been put forward as a mean to improve quality and responsiveness to the person’s care needs, care continuity and coordination remains a challenge. There is a need for clarifying the perspectives of primary healthcare providers to develop initiatives supporting interdisciplinary collaboration to improve quality and responsiveness of primary healthcare.
Aim: To examine how primary healthcare providers perceive primary healthcare services focusing on preventing hospitalizations. Further to explain how the interdisciplinary collaborations in providing person-centered care can be supported.
Methods: Five focus group interviews were conducted with 27 healthcare providers including primary care physicians, social and healthcare helpers/assistants, occupational therapists, physiotherapists, home care nurses, specialist nurses and acute care nurses. The focus group interviews were transcribed and analyzed using qualitative inductive content analysis.
Key Findings: Three categories emerged from the analyzed interviews: 1) Mental and social conditions influence physical functioning and need for hospitalization, 2) Well-established primary healthcare services are important to provide person-centred care through interdisciplinary collaboration, and 3) The interdisciplinary collaboration in primary healthcare services is dominated by a focus on handling acute physical conditions. These categories show that the healthcare providers are attentive towards the influence of mental, social and physical conditions on the risk of acute complications and needs for hospitalization, thereby entailing a focus on person-centred care. Meanwhile, the interdisciplinary collaborations among primary healthcare providers primarily focus on handling acute physical conditions. This is a barrier for interdisciplinary collaboration across municipal healthcare settings and general practices required in the provision of person-centred care to prevent acute complications and hospitalizations.
Conclusions: The findings can be a valuable resource in developing interdisciplinary care initiatives that respond to the person’s needs. In this way, it might be possible to reduce risk of hospitalization, and ultimately improve quality and responsiveness of primary healthcare.
Implications: This study examined the interdisciplinary collaboration in the primary healthcare sector through focus group interviews. It may be relevant to supplement the findings with knowledge on interdisciplinary collaboration across primary and secondary healthcare sectors, and with findings from qualitative studies that examine the perspective of the person with care needs.