Planning for post-hospital care - local challenges to general benefits of e-messages: hospital staff's perspectives

An e-message system is one of the promising communication tools for fostering better collaboration between hospitals and municipal-based homecare services. However, hospital care is often confronted with patients that need a myriad of services after discharge, of which municipal homecare is only one. We conducted a qualitative interview study to examine hospital health professionals’ experiences with an e-message system and the role of such a system. While e-messages are a helpful tool for communicating with homecare services, the findings highlight important policy, organizational and patient-related issues that the health professionals felt constrained their ability to fully exploit the benefits of the e-message system.