Lack of Coordination between Health Care and Social Care in Multi-Professional Teamwork - the Obstacle for Coherent Care of Older People Suffering from Multi-Morbidity

The lack of a cohesive health and social care is a well-known problem of significance for ageing people in general and frail older people in particular. Responsibility for organising and conducting social care and healthcare for the elderly rests on different principals in different countries but difficulties with organisational coordination and collaboration between professions and authorities in social care and healthcare is an extensive concern worldwide. Regardless of the distribution of responsibilities, collaboration and coordination structures are complex and often lead to problems. However, the gap in the coordination between different organisations and the collaboration between professions, implying that frail older people with major care needs still living in their own homes are pinched, has received hardly any recognition. By closely following an implementation project focused on teamwork in order to improve collaboration and coordination between social care and healthcare, the purpose of this article is to fill this gap with the help of an example from Sweden. Data consisted of event diaries, observations, focus groups, structured questionnaires and interviews. Findings showed that multi-professional teams certainly were established, but did not work or last. Among the obstacles found the most prominent features were the various professions’ own organisations, territorial thinking and rivalries. The whole idea of the initiative to achieve a cohesive healthcare and social care for ageing frail older people fell through. By letting this happen, not only did the project hinder the development of better practice in serving older adults, but also cemented the problematic structures it was intended to dissolve.