Electronic exchange of discharge summaries between hospital and municipal care from health personnel's perspectives
Line Melby,Ragnhild Hellesø +1 more
TLDR
The study showed that the electronic discharge summary contributed to changes in health staff's work processes as well as increased legibility of summaries, and enabled municipal care staff to be better prepared for receiving patients, even though the information content mostly remained unaltered and was not always accurate.Abstract:
Introduction : Information and communication technologies (ICT) are seen as potentially powerful tools that may promote integration of care across organisational boundaries. Here we present findings from a study of a Norwegian project where an electronic interdisciplinary discharge summary was implemented to improve communication and information exchange between the municipal care service and the associated hospital. Objective : To investigate the implications of introduction and use of the electronic discharge summary for health staff, and relate it to the potential for promoting integration of care across the hospital-municipality boundary. Methods : We conducted semi-structured interviews with 49 health care providers. The material was analysed using a three-step process to identify the main themes and categories. Findings : The study showed that the electronic discharge summary contributed to changes in health staff's work processes as well as increased legibility of summaries, and enabled municipal care staff to be better prepared for receiving patients, even though the information content mostly remained unaltered and was not always accurate. Conclusion : Introduction of electronic discharge summaries did not result in a significant increase in integration of care. However, the project was a catalyst for the collaborating participants to address their interaction from new perspectives.read more
Citations
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Introducing electronic messaging in Norwegian healthcare: unintended consequences for interprofessional collaboration.
Line Melby,Ragnhild Hellesø +1 more
TL;DR: It is shown that the introduction of e-messaging led to both desirable and undesirable unintended consequences for interprofessional collaboration, particularly how it affected collaboration between the groups.
Journal ArticleDOI
Accuracy and continuity in discharge information for patients with eating difficulties after stroke.
TL;DR: Although all patients were at risk of undernutrition, had multiple eating difficulties and were in too poor a state for rehabilitation, explicit care plans for nutritional problems were lacking.
Journal ArticleDOI
Coordination between primary and secondary care: the role of electronic messages and economic incentives
TL;DR: The inter-organizational nature of coordination in health care makes it crucial for policymakers and management of care organizations to conceive incentives and instruments that work jointly across organizations rather than at only one of the health care organizations involved.
Journal ArticleDOI
Toward Increased Patient Safety? Electronic Communication of Medication Information Between Nurses in Home Health Care and General Practitioners
TL;DR: The results show that using a messaging system in the clinical communication and collaboration led to nurses in home health care and general practitioners more easily connecting, medication information being more accessible and medication information having a higher quality.
Journal ArticleDOI
Home care nurses' experiences with using electronic messaging in their communication with general practitioners
TL;DR: E-messaging did not replace but rather complemented the communication methods and thereby transformed clinical communication and collaboration and should be considered when planning and implementing new information technology in primary care.
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TL;DR: Interventions such as computer-generated summaries and standardized formats may facilitate more timely transfer of pertinent patient information to primary care physicians and make discharge summaries more consistently available during follow-up care.
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