Interprofessional collaboration in the home care setting: perspectives of people receiving home care, relatives, nurses, general practitioners, and therapists—results of a qualitative analysis

About one million people in need of home care in Germany are assisted by 15,400 home care services. Home healthcare is mostly a complex endeavour because interprofessional collaboration is often challenging. This might negatively impact patient safety. The project interprof HOME aims to develop an interprofessional person-centred care concept for people receiving home care in a multistep approach. In one of the work packages we explored how people receiving home care, relatives, nurses, general practitioners, and therapists (physiotherapists, occupational therapists, and speech therapists) perceive collaboration in this setting. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 20 people receiving home care and with 21 relatives. Additionally, we worked with nine monoprofessional focus groups involving nurses of home care services (n = 17), general practitioners (n = 14), and therapists (n = 21). The data were analysed by content analysis. Three main categories evolved: “perception of interprofessional collaboration”, “means of communication”, and “barriers and facilitators”. People receiving home care and relatives often perceive little to no interprofessional collaboration and take over a significant part of the organisational coordination and information exchange. Interprofessional collaboration in steady care situations does exist at times and mostly occurs in coordination tasks. Contact and information exchange are rare, however, interprofessional personal encounters are sporadic, and fixed agreements and permanent contact persons are not standard. These trends increase with the complexity of the healthcare situation. Joint collaborations are often perceived as highly beneficial. Means of communications such as telephone, fax, or e-mail are used differently and are often considered tedious and time-consuming. No interprofessional formal written or electronic documentation system exists. Personal acquaintance and mutual trust are perceived as being beneficial, while a lack of mutual availability, limited time, and inadequate compensation hinder interprofessional collaboration. Interprofessional collaboration in home care occurs irregularly, and coordination often remains with people receiving home care or relatives. While this individual care set-up may work sufficiently well in low complex care situations, it becomes vulnerable to disruptions with increasing complexity. Close interactions, joint collaboration, and fixed means of communication might improve healthcare at home. The findings were integrated into the development of the person-centred interprofessional care concept interprof HOME. This study is registered on the International Clinical Trails registry platform ClinicalTrials.gov as NCT05149937 on 03/11/2021.