Strategies to improve implementation of collaborative care for functional disorders and persistent somatic symptoms:...

Persistent somatic symptoms and functional disorders (PSS/FD) are often complex conditions requiring care from multiple disciplines. One way of bringing the different disciplines together is through collaborative care. Little is known about the implementation barriers faced and relevant strategies to tackle the barriers in this field. Therefore, using expert knowledge, we aim to develop realistic strategies for dealing with implementation barriers of collaborative care in PSS/FD.

The Research World Café method is a single-session, expert-based method with multiple focus-groups forming and reforming to answer a set of inter-related questions, under the guidance of moderators. Using this method, participants involved in PSS/FD care across different areas of healthcare in the Netherlands developed several realistic strategies for dealing with ten implementation barriers for collaborative care in PSS/FD that were previously identified in a Delphi study. Strategies were grouped into strategy clusters using a card-sorting task.

Thirty-three participants took part, representing ten different disciplines, most commonly physiotherapists, psychologists, and physicians. In total, 54 strategies, identified in response to the ten barriers, were grouped into eight strategy clusters. The strategy clusters were professional education, communication, care coordination, care pathways, joint consults, funding, patient involvement, and prevention.

We identified a number of useful strategies for dealing with implementation barriers for collaborative care in PSS/FD. Many strategies provided ways to deal with multiple barriers at once. The effects of applying these strategies in collaborative care in PSS/FD will need testing through implementation studies, as well as in other areas needing multidisciplinary care.