Municipal Acute Bed Units as a Health Service Innovation—A Qualitative Study

The growing number of older individuals with complex needs and chronic illnesses is a major challenge to the health sector. This has led to a transfer of responsibilities from specialist to the primary healthcare sector. The aim of the study was to explore how healthcare professionals experience setting up and operating a municipal acute bed unit (MAU) in primary healthcare. Three focus groups of health professionals were recruited through purposeful sampling in 2019, and the 10 participants came from different professions. The study has a qualitative design with a hermeneutic approach. The findings identified three themes: (a) Strategic planning and coordinated services, (b) collaborative practice and learning and (c) flexible and family-centred care. The healthcare personnel experienced strengthened quality in the health services, improved work processes and increased safety for patients with relevant diagnoses. The interplay between internal and external factors seems to have been a successful innovation in planning and implementing an MAU in a medical facility in Mid-Norway. We assessed that being prepared for challenges is an important part of innovation in health services. The presence of an ‘inherent capital’ to meet unforeseen challenges in the future should be a prerequisite for innovation.