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A qualitative evaluation of general practitioners' views on protocol-driven eReferral in Scotland.

ABSTRACT: The ever increasing volume of referrals from primary care to specialist services is putting considerable pressure on resource-constrained health services while effective communication across fragmented services remains a substantial challenge. Previous studies have suggested that electronic referrals (eReferral) can bear important benefits for cross-organisational processes and patient care management.We conducted 25 semi-structured interviews and 1 focus group with primary care providers to elucidate General Practitioners' (GPs) perspectives on information management processes in the patient pathway in NHSScotland, 1 focus group with members of the Scottish Electronic Patient Record programme and one interview with a senior architect of the Scottish Care Information national eReferral System (SCI Gateway). Using Normalisation Process Theory, we performed a qualitative analysis to elucidate GPs' perspectives on eReferral to identify the factors which they felt either facilitated or hindered referral processes.The majority of GPs interviewed felt that eReferral substantially streamlined communication processes, with the immediate transfer of referral documents and the availability of an electronic audit trail perceived as two substantial improvements over paper-based referrals. Most GPs felt that the SCI Gateway system was reasonably straightforward to use. Referral protocols and templates could be perceived as useful by some GPs while others considered them to be cumbersome at times.Our study suggests that the deployment and adoption of eReferral across the NHS in Scotland has been achieved by a combination of factors: (i) a policy context - including national mandatory targets for eReferral - which all NHS health-boards were bound to operationalise through their Local Delivery Plans and also (ii) the fact that primary care doctors considered that the overall benefits brought by the deployment of eReferral throughout the patient pathway significantly outweigh any potential disbenefits.

SUBMITTER: Bouamrane MM

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4101875 | biostudies-other | 2014 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-other

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A qualitative evaluation of general practitioners' views on protocol-driven eReferral in Scotland.

Bouamrane Matt-Mouley MM Mair Frances S FS

BMC medical informatics and decision making 20140409

<h4>Background</h4>The ever increasing volume of referrals from primary care to specialist services is putting considerable pressure on resource-constrained health services while effective communication across fragmented services remains a substantial challenge. Previous studies have suggested that electronic referrals (eReferral) can bear important benefits for cross-organisational processes and patient care management.<h4>Methods</h4>We conducted 25 semi-structured interviews and 1 focus group ...[more]

PMID: 24712766

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Project description:BackgroundThe potential for machine learning to disrupt the medical profession is the subject of ongoing debate within biomedical informatics and related fields.ObjectiveThis study aimed to explore general practitioners' (GPs') opinions about the potential impact of future technology on key tasks in primary care.MethodsIn June 2018, we conducted a Web-based survey of 720 UK GPs' opinions about the likelihood of future technology to fully replace GPs in performing 6 key primary care tasks, and, if respondents considered replacement for a particular task likely, to estimate how soon the technological capacity might emerge. This study involved qualitative descriptive analysis of written responses ("comments") to an open-ended question in the survey.ResultsComments were classified into 3 major categories in relation to primary care: (1) limitations of future technology, (2) potential benefits of future technology, and (3) social and ethical concerns. Perceived limitations included the beliefs that communication and empathy are exclusively human competencies; many GPs also considered clinical reasoning and the ability to provide value-based care as necessitating physicians' judgments. Perceived benefits of technology included expectations about improved efficiencies, in particular with respect to the reduction of administrative burdens on physicians. Social and ethical concerns encompassed multiple, divergent themes including the need to train more doctors to overcome workforce shortfalls and misgivings about the acceptability of future technology to patients. However, some GPs believed that the failure to adopt technological innovations could incur harms to both patients and physicians.ConclusionsThis study presents timely information on physicians' views about the scope of artificial intelligence (AI) in primary care. Overwhelmingly, GPs considered the potential of AI to be limited. These views differ from the predictions of biomedical informaticians. More extensive, stand-alone qualitative work would provide a more in-depth understanding of GPs' views.

Dataset Information

A qualitative evaluation of general practitioners' views on protocol-driven eReferral in Scotland.

Publications

A qualitative evaluation of general practitioners' views on protocol-driven eReferral in Scotland.

Similar Datasets

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