Redistributing work: Opportunities, strategies, and outcomes when tasks are shifted and shared in new ways using remote patient monitoring

Research problem and specific questions: The acute staffing crisis in healthcare calls for the need to redesign care delivery models to meet the needs of patients in efficient ways. Remote patient monitoring (RPM) has been proposed as a new model of care to achieve this.

Yet, RPM often fails to be implemented due to difficulties in integrating new or changed tasks into the daily work of an already strained workforce.

Task shifting has been recommended as a strategy to make best use of available resources, but the shifting of tasks from healthcare staff to patients, caregivers, and digital health technologies remains largely unexplored.

Our specific research questions are:How do healthcare professionals, patients, and informal caregivers experience their work tasks related to RPM?How can task shifting and sharing be made explicit in the context of RPM?How does the shifting and sharing of tasks in the context of RPM influence patient, caregiver, and staff experiences?How does the shifting and sharing of tasks in the context of RPM influence healthcare costs?Data and method: The study context will involve four hospitals in the Stockholm Region that are developing RPM services for various care processes.

We will engage with the hospitals using an action research approach involving three phases.

In phase 1, we will explore experiences of work tasks related to RPM; in phase 2, we will engage relevant actors in co-designing task shifting strategies; in phase 3, we will evaluate experiences and costs of task shifting.

Data will be collected qualitatively (observations, interviews, focus group discussions, co-design workshops, documents) and quantitatively (questionnaires, care utilization, costs).Societal relevance and utilization: This project addresses the societal challenge of ensuring high-quality healthcare in the face of workforce shortages and increasing patient demands.

By exploring how task shifting can be supported in the context of RPM, we aim to provide evidence-based solutions that can improve resource utilization in healthcare, and the experiences of healthcare professionals, patients, and informal caregivers.Plan for project realization: Access to the study setting has been established.

Data collection and analysis will be carried out longitudinally by experienced researchers with interdisciplinary expertise, as well as co-researchers from the study context. The costs cover mainly personnel, analysis, and dissemination activities.