From Silos to Teams: Enhancing Interdisciplinary Collaboration in Primary Care
Holistic patient care doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Physicians must be able to communicate effectively to understand each patient’s unique needs, including potentially complex or chronic health conditions. By enhancing interdisciplinary collaboration in primary health care, medical professionals can significantly improve provider and patient experiences alike.
Dr. Mike Krug, a practicing general internist at the University of Washington School of Medicine, has extensive experience in inpatient and outpatient settings. “I think there are massive benefits to improving care coordination and communication across medical disciplines and professions,” he says. “I view coordination and collaboration as a major skill and service that we can provide to our patients.”
What Is Interdisciplinary Collaboration in Health Care?
Interdisciplinary collaboration, sometimes called interprofessional collaboration, is the practice of working together with care teams to deliver more comprehensive care. This can include clinicians, nurses, pharmacists, social workers, mental health professionals, and even a patient’s family. Essentially, it’s a matter of listening, learning, and sharing expertise.
Dr. Krug highlights the value of diverse perspectives in improving quality of care. “If you coordinate for a patient, you’re going to provide massive benefit, even if you don’t use your textbook medical knowledge,” he says. “You are using your skill, your medical parlance, your connections — you’re using a lot of skills beyond your medical knowledge to help the patient in front of you.”
Consider a patient with a complex condition such as diabetes. This patient might have a primary care provider, endocrinologist, nutritionist, pharmacist, and social worker, and potentially a behavioral health specialist. Collecting and sharing perspectives across disciplines can help each professional put together a complete picture of the patient’s health, which in turn improves care and treatment decisions.
Interdisciplinary Collaboration in the Real World
Team-based care is one of the biggest trends in internal medicine. Any member of a patient’s care team can reach out and build those interconnected systems, with the benefits extending across many patient cases.
“It’s important to collaborate not only for the patient in front of you, but then to ask more generalized questions that will help future patients who have the same problem,” Dr. Krug says.
For example, poor communication and misalignment can slow treatments for entire categories of patients. Dr. Krug recalls an orthopaedic surgery group that needed to operate on patients who were taking baby aspirin. Members of the cardiology group believed that these surgeries couldn’t be performed until the patients changed or stopped their medication. “That was a major disconnect where patients who could have safely gotten surgery in a shorter timeline were being asked to delay,” he says.
Dr. Krug met with the orthopedic surgeons and discovered that surgical patients taking baby aspirin didn’t experience significant adverse effects. He then spoke with the cardiology group and learned that they agreed it could be safe. Dr. Krug collaborated with both groups to confirm this guidance, then built a framework for future situations.
“Of course, there will still be nuances with specific patients,” he says, “But in general, I took the collaboration, centered around one patient, and asked whether these are general rules that I can follow and help my patients moving forward.”
Where to Find Resources and New Ideas
When questions require specialty expertise, the first point of contact is the relevant specialist. But don’t forget about potentially untapped resources beyond the core care team.
Dr. Krug notes that pharmacists are often underutilized in collaborative conversations. “You can get some really amazing information from pharmacists and coax them into being a partner and a resource for you moving forward,” he says. “They’re eager to do that, and they don’t get that much connection.”
Social workers are another opportunity for collaboration, as they “can be extraordinarily helpful in collaborating for the benefit of your patient,” Dr. Krug adds. “It’s really important to understand their dynamic and to partner with them fully, not outsource the issue to social workers.”
Yet another fount of information can be found in behavioral health specialists. “I had really robust access to mental health specialists and social workers, psychologists, nurses trained in behavioral health, psychiatrists, etc. Gosh, was that nice!” says Dr. Krug.
“When mental health crises come up, it’s scary and it’s sad,” he adds, “And it’s really useful to have other professional team members on board with their different vantage points as it pertains to legal stuff, services you can offer, community connections, police services, etc.”
The Importance of Interdisciplinary Collaboration in Health Care
Once you’ve found resources and team members to support collaboration, you can begin to see tangible benefits for both patients and providers.
Improved Patient Outcomes and Safety
Medical errors are one of the leading causes of preventable harm in the U.S. They affect hundreds of thousands of Americans each year, with more than 200,000 patients dying because of preventable medical errors. Some of these errors stem from individual mistakes, but many more come from communication breakdowns.
Interdisciplinary team collaboration can reduce adverse events by creating better systems, sharing information more effectively, and clarifying responsibilities. Better team communication makes it easier to notice incorrect doses or drug interactions, clear up ambiguous orders, and prevent errors in hand-offs.
Patients with chronic diseases, for example, benefit from coordinated care and comprehensive management. Clinicians, nurses, pharmacists, nutritionists, and other specialists can team up to address a patient’s complex needs and identify gaps in care.
Efficiency, Cost Savings, and Resource Optimization
When care teams work in silos, they’re more likely to duplicate services. Patients undergo repetitive tests, receive conflicting advice, or are referred back and forth unnecessarily. When professionals properly share information and align their care plans, these kinds of redundancies disappear.
Efficient collaboration also has financial benefits. Health systems that reduce unnecessary interventions and effectively coordinate care have been shown to reduce the cost of care.
Better Experiences for Patients and Providers
Connecting with patients is a challenge worth pursuing. When patients feel seen by their whole care team, their satisfaction goes up. They’re more likely to remain engaged and follow treatment plans. Collaboration helps define goals more clearly and develop realistic treatment plans.
Providers experience the benefits, too. Teamwork and mutual respect improve job satisfaction and can help reduce burnout. By enhancing interdisciplinary collaboration in primary health care, each team member can bring their expertise to the case and accept responsibility for their contributions.
Key Barriers to Collaboration: Miscommunication and Challenging Patients
Enhancing interdisciplinary collaboration in primary health care is easier said than done. For one, the ideal conditions rarely exist.
“In an ideal world, we’d have some kind of magic, universal, HIPAA-compliant, safe record system. We don’t have that,” says Dr. Krug. “In another perfect world, every patient would come with every record and provide the notes and phone numbers of all the different clinicians they’ve seen in the past year. That doesn’t happen either.”
Communication gaps or unclear provider expectations can complicate collaboration.
“Unfortunately, poor communication between providers does come up, and it impacts patient care,” says Dr. Krug. “What happens then is that one provider uses the patient’s recollection of their interview with another provider to move forward. Even the very savvy patients don’t necessarily grasp the nuance of some of their providers’ decisions and what’s being communicated to them.”
Patients can complicate collaboration, especially if they have complaints or create confusion. “The actual meaningful steps of moving care forward can get lost or misperceived in that shuffle,” says Dr. Krug. “Focus on practical terms, tangibly: How can we help this person? How can we work together? And how can I help suppress frustrations that may build up in the name of moving care forward for this patient?”
Tried-And-True Methods for Effective Team Communication
Collaboration is a skill, and that means it can be learned. Try these evidence-based frameworks that improve communication and reduce harm, then see how they could benefit your everyday routines.
TeamSTEPPS
Team Strategies and Tools to Enhance Performance and Patient Safety (TeamSTEPPS) is a comprehensive, evidence-based framework that was developed to improve teamwork, communication, and patient safety across medical environments. Its modular curriculum, simulation-based training, interactive workshops, guides, and role-specific resources can be applied directly to your real-life experience.
Simulation, Practice Tools, and Ongoing Feedback
Nobody can predict every possible scenario in a clinical setting, but simulations present an opportunity to think ahead. Practice various communication, coordination, and decision-making scenarios in a safe, controlled environment to identify potential errors before they happen in real-life settings. A guided debriefing allows teams to reflect on what went well, what broke down, and new ways to improve — without creating risk for patients.
Practical Steps for Health Care Organizations
The importance of interdisciplinary collaboration in health care is wide-reaching, but for organizations to see results, they must do more than promote the idea. They must make collaboration widespread and best practice. This requires a mix of tools, training, leadership, and cultural support.
Structured communication tools such as SBAR, I-PASS, and daily huddles create a shared language and structure information for more efficient communication. Professional development and training is another key component. Explore ongoing CME, simulations, and interdisciplinary workshops that mimic real clinical situations. Throughout, measure team communication effectiveness, patient safety indicators, and outcomes, using that data to improve systems and build accountability.
Ultimately, enhancing interdisciplinary collaboration in primary health care starts with building trust. “My advice for clinicians who feel siloed off or feel a lack of connection with other professions or specialties is to make connections!” says Dr. Krug. “That’s a bit tongue in cheek, but I think it’s super-important to have these conversations in whatever way you can find them.”
In truth, not all interdisciplinary collaboration needs to be inside a classroom or solve a specific patient’s problem. “Keep an eye out socially, and don’t let opportunities pass,” says Dr. Krug. “If you interact with another clinician socially, lean into that. That clinician bond may serve you well later on.”
The Future of Primary Care Is Collaborative
Interdisciplinary collaboration has moved far beyond sifting through handwritten notes, faxes, or static digital files. Today, secure chat apps and robust EHR systems make it easy to get in touch.
“In the last decade, technological advances have changed how I collaborate with other professions and specialties because now, there are multiple ways to communicate with them,” says Dr. Krug. “It's a quicker conversation now. You’re starting from a midpoint. You’re not starting from scratch.”
By enhancing interdisciplinary collaboration in primary health care, your system differentiates itself as one that’s truly patient-centered. Opening the lines of communication can lead to better outcomes, stronger diagnostic decisions, more efficient use of resources, and more job satisfaction for providers.
Ready to deepen your interdisciplinary skillset and improve patient outcomes? Explore Oakstone’s CME programs — developed by leading experts and designed to fit the latest approaches in team-based care into your busy schedule.