title: The critical components of an electronic care plan tool for primary care: an exploratory qualitative study.
abstract: A critical need exists for effective electronic tools that facilitate multidisciplinary care for complex patients in patient-centered medical homes.Objective To identify the essential components of a primary care (PC) based electronic care plan (ECP) tool that facilitates coordination of care for complex patients.
  
  
  
  Three focus groups and nine semi-structured interviews were conducted at an academic PC practice in order to identify the ideal components of an ECP.
  
  
  
  Critical components of an ECP identified included: 1) patient background information, including patient demographics, care team member designation and key patient contacts, 2) user- and patient-centric task management functionalities, 3) a summary of a patient's care needs linked to the responsible member of the care team and 4) integration with the electronic medical record. We then designed an ECP mockup incorporating these components.
  
  
  
  Our investigation identified key principles that healthcare software developers can integrate into PC and patient-centered ECP tools.
authors.affiliation: Harvard Medical School, Harvard Business School. lisa_rotenstein@hms.harvard.edu.
authors.forename: Lisa
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Rotenstein
authors.affiliation: George Washington University School of Medicine. sk.tucker530@gmail.com.
authors.forename: Suhavi
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Tucker
authors.affiliation: Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School. rose_kakoza@dfci.harvard.edu.
authors.forename: Rose
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Kakoza
authors.affiliation: Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School. ltishler@pchi.partners.org.
authors.forename: Lori
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Tishler
authors.affiliation: Laboratory for Computer Science at Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School. azai@mgh.harvard.edu.
authors.forename: Adrian
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Zai
authors.affiliation: Boston Medical Center. charlotte.wu@bmc.org.
authors.forename: Charlotte
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Wu
mesh_terms: D057286:Electronic Health Records; D017144:Focus Groups; D006801:Humans; D007407:Interviews as Topic; D018802:Patient-Centered Care; D011320:Primary Health Care / Q000379:methods*; D036301:Qualitative Research
keywords: health care team; health information technology; interdisciplinary communication; patient care planning; primary care