Characterizing the Structure of a Patient's Care Team through Electronic Encounter Data Analysis

Area of Science:

• Health Informatics
• Medical Sociology
• Network Science

Background:

• Increasing medical specialization leads to larger care teams for individual patients, especially those with multiple chronic conditions.
• Effective communication among healthcare providers is crucial for care coordination, efficient resource utilization, and improved patient health outcomes.
• Understanding the composition and relationships within a patient's care team is the foundational step for coordinated care.

Purpose of the Study:

• To introduce the concept of a patient's care team.
• To demonstrate the feasibility of identifying relevant healthcare providers for individual patients using electronic patient encounter data.
• To visualize care team structures and patient-provider relationship strengths using network analysis.

Main Methods:

• Leveraging electronic patient encounter data to identify healthcare providers involved in a patient's care.
• Applying network analysis techniques to map and quantify relationships within the care team.
• Developing a visualization method for care team structures.

Main Results:

• Successfully demonstrated the feasibility of identifying individual patient care teams from electronic health records.
• Visualized care team structures, highlighting the strength of patient-provider relationships.
• Provided a quantifiable method for understanding care team dynamics.

Conclusions:

• The proposed method of identifying and visualizing patient care teams is foundational for achieving patient-centered, coordinated care.
• Electronic health records offer a valuable resource for understanding and optimizing healthcare provider networks.
• This work supports the advancement of coordinated care strategies in the digital healthcare era.