Collaboration between health professionals across organisational boundaries: a case study of diabetes
Chief Investigators
Julie McDonald
Other Investigators
Mark Harris and Rohan Jayasuriya
Rationale
In response to the rising burden of chronic disease and changing patterns of health care delivery, most prevention and ongoing care is delivered in primary health care settings by a range of medical and allied health professionals. There are challenges in providing coordinated multidisciplinary care that crosses organisation boundaries and in health systems where there is mix of policy, funding and management arrangements.
Aim/s
- In what ways do health professionals from different organisations collaborate to provide multidisciplinary care for the prevention and treatment of T2DM?
- What factors influence these patterns of collaboration for multidisciplinary care?
- How do these factors related to collaboration and the patterns of collaboration for multidisciplinary care influence the experiences of patients with T2DM?
Design and Method
This qualitative case study examined collaboration in diabetes care between health professionals working in different organisations and investigated patient experiences of multidisciplinary care. It drew on resource dependency theory and transactional cost analysis and involved a network survey and semi-structured interviews with a purposive sample of 45 health providers from 20 organisations and 8 patients.
