Improving continuity of care through digital solutions: a study among general practitioners in Finland

Ulla Mikkonen, Kadri Suija, Tuomas Koskela, Pekka Mäntyselkä, Nina Tusa

Keywords: Continuity of care; Digitalization; General practice

Background:

General practitioners (GPs) use various digital solutions every day. Health service providers could harness these to assist a patient and health care professional to improve continuity of care (COC).

Research questions:

The purpose of this study was to find out general practitioners’ views on how digital solutions can improve COC.

Method:

A web-based survey among GPs in Finland from May to October in 2023. In the survey, we asked GPs in Finland: “How would you enhance the implementation of continuity of care?” In this substudy, we analysed answers considering digital solutions. We sent the survey by email to the contact persons of health services and requested them to spread it forward to the GPs in the working area. We analysed data using inductive thematic analysis.

Results:

We received a total of 295 answers from GPs all around Finland. Respondents were mostly specialists of general practice or resident doctors with over five years of working experience and usually working in large health centres. Digitalization was one of the main themes in the answers about improving COC. In relation to digitalization, we identified the following main themes (subthemes in parentheses): coordination of care (“digitalization to serve and support COC”), informational continuity (“every health care professional responsible for updating the care plan”, ”easy-to-access medication”, “care plan, treatment goals, and description of functional ability available”), user-driven development of electronic health record systems (“same electronic health record system for all”, “developing electronic health record system to support COC”), and knowledge of the realization of COC (“shared goal”, “measuring COC and using this knowledge”).

Conclusions:

Digitalization was mainly mentioned related to informational and system level COC. Digital solutions can ease the implementation of COC even in the large health centres.

Points for discussion:

The role of electronic health record systems around Europe from the perspective of COC

What kind of digital solutions can aid GPs to implement COC?

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