Barriers to exchanging healthcare information in inter-municipal healthcare services: a qualitative case study

Abstract

BackgroundIn recent years, inter-municipal cooperation in healthcare services has been an important measure implemented to meet future demographic changes in western countries. This entails an increased focus on communication and information sharing across organisational borders. Technology enables efficient and effective solutions to enhance such cooperation. However, the systems in the healthcare sector tend not to communicate with one another. There is a lack of literature focusing on communication and information sharing in inter-municipal healthcare services. The aim of this article is to investigate both the characteristics of communication and information sharing, and the factors that serve as barriers to communication and information sharing for employees in inter-municipal healthcare services.MethodsIn this study, a qualitative case study approach is used to investigate both characteristics of communication and information sharing, and factors enabling barriers to communication and information sharing for employees in newly established inter-municipal healthcare services. Data collection methods were individual interviews, focus group interviews, observation studies and a workshop. A total of 18 persons participated in the study. The interviews, observations and workshop were conducted over a period of ten months.ResultsCommunication and information sharing practices were found to be complex and characterised by multiple actors, information types and a combination of multiple actions. Findings indicate that 1. IT capability and usability 2. Differences 3. Privacy, confidentiality and security and 4. Awareness are all factors enabling barriers to communication and information sharing in inter-municipal healthcare services. Specifically, these barriers were related to lack of EHR usability, inadequate workflow processes, digital systems incompatibility, the understanding of needs in different systems and knowledge and practices regarding privacy and confidentiality.ConclusionBy focusing on the context of inter-municipal cooperation when assessing communication and information sharing in healthcare services, this article contributes to close a gap in existing knowledge. The perspective of the employees provides useful insight, and findings can be relevant for future theory development and for managers and policymakers in inter-municipal services.

Structural Model of the Healthcare Information Security Behavior of Nurses Applying Protection Motivation Theory

“…Threat appraisal, which included intrinsic rewards, extrinsic rewards, severity, and vulnerability as subfactors, was found to have no effect on the nurses' HIS intentions and behavior. The results of the studies by Kim et al [33] and Holen et al [20], who reported more beneficial HIS intentions and behavior effects, are in contrast to the results of this study. This suggests that nurses are aware of the importance of HIS behavior and the associated risks to patients, and do not simply seek intrinsic rewards such as satisfaction and achievement when exhibiting HIS behavior.…”

“…Additionally, we considered the intention to be the adoption of actions to protect oneself from threats [17]. Subfactors related to threat appraisal include intrinsic rewards, extrinsic rewards, severity, and vulnerability, according to the results of prior studies [5,12,[18][19][20][21][22][23][24], leading to the following hypothesis: Hypothesis 1 (H1). The threat appraisal of HIS by nurses will affect their intentions.…”

“…In this study, coping appraisal was defined as the extent to which nurses are able to cope with losses arising from HIS threats. Subfactors related to coping appraisal include response efficacy, self-efficacy, and response costs, according to the results of prior studies [18,20,21,[24][25][26][27], leading to the following hypothesis: Hypothesis 2 (H2). The coping appraisal of HIS by nurses will affect their intentions.…”

See Change: Overcoming Anti-Black Racism in Health Systems

“…Over the years, though these standards have supported the field's progress, they also contribute to the unintended consequence of creating professional silos and biases that impact public health. Examples include fragmented healthcare delivery ( 70 ), barriers to information sharing ( 71 ), and the fallacy of “Expert Immunity,” or the incorrect belief that experts are impartial or immune to biases due to their expertise ( 72 ).…”

Digitalisation of municipal healthcare collaboration with volunteers: a case study applying normalization process theory

“…Other scholars have studied the implementation of technology in healthcare settings [ 17 , 24 – 26 ], and the NPT has been applied for structuring the analysis and results of these studies [ 13 , 14 , 23 , 27 ]. Collaboration between public healthcare services using technology has also been previously studied [ 28 – 31 ], showing the importance of achieving understanding, commitment and engagement towards an intervention to succeed [ 13 , 14 , 23 , 27 ]. What differentiates our study is that the implementation process involved employees from the public and civil sectors, that is, employees in municipal healthcare units and volunteer centres, providing insights into the implementation of technology that can help different organisations collaborate on the coordination of volunteers.…”