The coordination hub: Toward patient-centered and collaborative care processes.

Area of Science:

• Health Services Research
• Information Systems
• Process Management

Background:

• Societal trends like aging populations and increased home care are escalating health and social care complexity.
• Fragmented care from multiple providers can lead to incoherent, uncoordinated, and interfering patient care processes.

Purpose of the Study:

• To introduce and define the concept of "process conglomeration" for analyzing complex patient care situations.
• To investigate the challenges inherent in process conglomerations.
• To propose a software-based solution for improving care coordination.

Main Methods:

• Utilized coordination theory to analyze problems within process conglomerations.
• Applied models for continuous process improvement to understand challenges.
• Defined "process conglomeration" as overlapping, time-shared patient care processes with a common well-being goal.

Main Results:

• Identified significant challenges in managing care when multiple providers are involved with a single patient.
• Characterized process conglomerations as complex sets of patient-centric, time-overlapping care activities.
• Proposed a "Coordination Hub" as a novel software solution to mitigate coordination issues.

Conclusions:

• Process conglomerations represent a critical challenge in modern health and social care delivery.
• The proposed "Coordination Hub" offers a viable technological approach to enhance care process coordination.
• Effective coordination is essential for improving patient health and social well-being outcomes.