Digital Care Chains in Health Care - a Study of Care Consumption, Care Quality, Work Environment and Well-being

Digital healthcare has developed rapidly to meet demands for accessible healthcare, streamline care and meet future challenges with increasing healthcare needs and reduced labour force in Sweden. Developers and stakeholders in Sweden want to exchange the praxis of phone triage to digital or semi-digital triaging tools, to relieve staff's workload and utilize better resource use that would benefit all patient groups. However, previous studies have showed demographic differences in utilization rate and an increase of simpler care matters when digital healthcare options are offered. Also, little is known of medical accuracy of digital triage tools and of the work environment in digital healthcare. More research is needed on this, as well as on care consumption, care quality and of patients' experiences of digital healthcare. The overall aim of the research project is to study a new digital healthcare platform being introduced in 2021/2022 in the County of Gävleborg, Sweden. The studies will focus on care quality and patient safety as well as explore the digital work environment and staff well-being in the digital healthcare platform. Data will be collected before and after the introduction of the digital healthcare platform, using register data and questionnaires. The data from the two time periods will be analyzed with descriptive and inference statistics, to explore if the digital healthcare platform has brought differences on group levels in staff estimates of care quality and patient safety as well as in work environment aspects such as the staffs' well-being.