Integrating professionals in French multi-professional health homes: Fostering collaboration beyond the walls

Current evidence of the effectiveness of multi-disciplinary co-location for healthcare integration is mixed. This case study investigates a territorial healthcare project that is implemented across four French rural healthcare practices that co-locate multi-disciplinary healthcare practitioners. Two levels of collaboration were identified: (i) local, intra-team collaboration (i.e., care and prevention) and (ii) territorial, inter-team collaboration (i.e., patient therapeutic education and knowledge sharing). An analysis of 50 interviews with healthcare professionals uncovers important aspects of successful multi-disciplinary collaboration, which is an intermediary between co-location and care integration. By highlighting the social dimension of care integration, with a specific focus on the professional component of interpersonal integration, this study expands the theory of care integration by identifying three antecedents of multi-disciplinary collaboration: (i) prior general practitioner joint-practice experience, (ii) professional impetus (i.e., initiated by practitioners) and (iii) general practitioner peer group membership. Successful multi-disciplinary co-location and, in turn, collaboration offer a range of benefits to both patients and practitioners and advance progress towards promising perspectives, such as local competence transfer and territorial contagion.