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 patientrelated issues that the health professionals felt constrained their ability to fully exploit the benefits of the e-message system.