Perspectives on seamless collaboration between primary and secondary care for oral anticancer treatments

Patients who take oral anticancer drugs (OACD) alternate between the hospital and the community setting. Little is known about how general practitioners (GPs) and community pharmacists (CPs) from primary care (PC) can be involved in providing seamless care. In an exploratory qualitative study, semi-structured interviews with healthcare professionals from primary and secondary care (SC) and (N = 26) were performed to investigate perceptions of seamless collaboration for patients on OACD. Seamless collaboration initiated by SC was restricted to informing GPs about treatment-initiation and delegating limited tasks to them in treatment monitoring. CPs are currently not informed by SC about the treatment. PC expressed willingness for seamless collaboration. However, collaboration is currently impeded due to an expressed lack of trust and desire for control by SC. Moreover, SC expressed unfamiliarity with the organization of PC. Findings suggest that healthcare professionals from SC and PC need to get to know each other and to discuss expectations in the seamless care for patients on OACD. A possible strategy is to elaborate a shared care model based on a partnership between PC and SC, in which the specific expertise of each partner contributes to patient-centered care and the qualitative and safe use of OACD.