Responsible coordination of municipal health and care services for individuals with serious mental illness: a participatory qualitative study with service users and professionals

Abstract

Background Care coordination is crucial to ensure the health of individuals with serious mental illness. The aim of this study was to describe and analyze an inclusive innovation process for coordinating municipal health and care services for individuals with serious mental illness. Methods We conducted café dialogues with professionals and service users with serious mental illness. The café dialogues engaged participants in conversation and knowledge exchange about care coordination, adressing topics of efficiency, challenges, and improvement. We used a responsible innovation framework to analyze the innovation process. Results Responsible coordination requires promoting service users’ health and ensuring communication and mutual awareness between professionals. Individual-level factors supporting responsible coordination included service users knowing their assigned professionals, personalized healthcare services, and access to meaningful activities. Provider-level factors included effective coordination routines, communication, information exchange, and professional familiarity. Results reflect professionals’ and service users’ perspectives on efficient care coordination, existing challenges, and measures to improve care coordination. Conclusion Café dialogues are an inclusive, participatory method that can produce insights into the responsible coordination of municipal health and care services for individuals with serious mental illness. The responsible innovation framework is helpful in identifying care coordination challenges and measures for responsible coordination.