Abstract
Effective coordination between medical and long-term services is essential to high-quality primary care for older adults, but can be challenging. Our study assessed coordination and communication through semi-structured interviews with Veterans Health Administration (VHA) primary care clinicians (n = 9); VHA-contracted home health agencies (n = 6); and home health aides (n = 8) caring for veterans at an urban VHA medical center. Participants reported (1) establishing home health services is complex, requiring collaboration between many individuals and systems; (2) communication between medical teams and agencies is often reactive; (3) formal communication channels between medical teams and agencies are lacking; (4) aides are an important source of patient information; and (5) aides report important information, but rarely receive it. Removing structural communication barriers; incentivizing reporting channels and information sharing between aides, agencies, and primary care teams; and integrating aides into interdisciplinary teams may improve coordination of medical and long-term care.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 552-560 |
Number of pages | 9 |
Journal | Journal of Applied Gerontology |
Volume | 42 |
Issue number | 4 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Apr 2023 |
Keywords
- care coordination
- communication
- home and community based care and services
- home care
- home care workers
- primary care
- qualitative methods
- veterans