Combining insights from sociology and geography, we examine how professionals organize professional relations, beyond the boundaries of their professional groups and through the process of mapmaking. We take the Netherlands as our case study. Here, between 2009 and 2015, the Ministry of Health initiated a program that stimulated professionals to develop alternative organizational formats for the provision of integrated primary care. Two of the funded projects used mapping techniques in order to give direction to such integrated organizational formats. Based on the literature, we develop and deploy an analytical framework that aims to capture: a) how professionals shaped interprofessional relations through mapmaking; and b) what the organizational consequences were of the maps developed. We reveal how professionals differentiated between elements during the mapmaking process. We furthermore demonstrate how such differentiations shaped the developed maps in particular ways. This, in turn, influenced whether and how these maps gave direction to new organizational formats. We close this paper with three points that scholars need to take into account when studying mapmaking in order to gain processual and dynamic insight into the organization of professional practice.
BackgroundThe need for organisational development in primary care has increased as it is accepted as a means of curbing rising costs and responding to demographic transitions. It is only within such inter-organisational networks that small-scale practices can offer treatment to complex patients and continuity of care. The aim of this paper is to explore, through the experience of professionals and patients, whether, and how, project management and network governance can improve the outcomes of projects which promote inter-organisational collaboration in primary care.MethodsThis paper describes a study of projects aimed at improving inter-organisational collaboration in Dutch primary care. The projects' success in project management and network governance was monitored by interviewing project leaders and board members on the one hand, and improvement in the collaboration by surveying professionals and patients on the other. Both qualitative and quantitative methods were applied to assess the projects. These were analysed, finally, using multi-level models in order to account for the variation in the projects, professionals and patients.ResultsSuccessful network governance was associated positively with the professionals’ satisfaction with the collaboration; but not with improvements in the quality of care as experienced by patients. Neither patients nor professionals perceived successful project management as associated with the outcomes of the collaboration projects.ConclusionsThis study shows that network governance in particular makes a difference to the outcomes of inter-organisational collaboration in primary care. However, project management is not a predictor for successful inter-organisational collaboration in primary care.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (10.1186/s12913-018-3169-8) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
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