"Då anklagar man icke-ortopeder för att vara dåliga ortopeder" : En studie om digital informationsöverföring inom sjukvården

Sammanfattning: Business processes that are maintained in, and through, digital information chains are a widespread phenomenon in society. In these chains, several actors are active both in the production and transfer of information, where each actor is dependent on another actor's effective transmission to be able to perform his job. To explore this phenomenon, this study investigates an electronic referral process of the regional Health Care system in Sweden, that allows for the transfer of rights, duties and obligations between health care providers. In this process, effective information transfer is necessary to achieve high levels of patient safety and to prevent delays in care delivery. This study intends to unveil the technological and communicative challenges of information transfer faced by doctors who are involved in that process. The study draws upon primary data collected from nine interviews conducted with secondary care doctors working at the Uppsala University Hospital. The results were analyzed primarily using communication theories of representation and through a constructionist perspective of knowledge. The results show that most challenges are communicative, most of which, as well as the technological challenges identified, relate to mediation and sharing of meaning. Challenges also tend to be more or less prominent depending on the actors involved, and the nature of what is being transferred. In order to deal with the challenges, the referral process is circumvented and the methods of circumventing prove to be as institutionalized as the referral process itself.