Balancing Priorities: A Field Study of Coordination in Distributed Elder Care

Within elder care, an increased distribution of care poses strong requirements on the ability of health providers, to coordinate their activities across organizational boundaries. However, existing care administration systems do not offer sufficient support for collaboration and coordination among a heterogeneous ensemble of care providers. In this paper, we present findings from a field study of coordinative work in distributed elder care in Denmark. The purpose of this study is to further our understanding of the coordinative challenges of distributed elder care, and to inform design of new care administration systems. Overall, we found that caregivers at the care center fulfill a crucial role in prioritizing the scheduled activities in cases where opposed interests occur, which indicates a need for a care administration system, that not only supports the meticulous planning of activities, that are needed by the healthcare system, but also the work involved in balancing priorities.