Franzosa, E., Judon, K. M., Gottesman, E. M., Koufacos, N. S., Runels, T., Augustine, M., ... & Boockvar, K. S. (2023). Improving Care Coordination Between Veterans Health Administration Primary Care Teams and Community Home Health Aide Providers: A Qualitative Study. Journal of Applied Gerontology, 42(4), 552-560.
Effective coordination between medical and long-term services is
essential to high-quality primary care for older adults, but can be challenging. Our study assessed coordination and communication through semi-structured interviews with Veterans Health Administration (VHA) primary care clinicians (n = 9); VHA-contracted home health agencies (n = 6); and home health aides (n = 8) caring for veterans at an urban VHA medical center. Participants reported (1) establishing home health services is complex, requiring collaboration between many individuals and systems; (2) communication between medical teams and agencies is often reactive; (3) formal communication channels between medical teams and agencies are lacking; (4) aides are an important source of patient information; and (5) aides report important information, but rarely receive it. Removing structural communication barriers; incentivizing reporting channels and information sharing between aides, agencies, and primary care teams; and integrating aides into interdisciplinary teams may improve coordination of medical and long-term care.