A Study on the Correlation Between the Degree of Interprofessional Collaboration and the Quality of Medical Practice

Healthcare is becoming the largest industry all over the world, and its problems are deeply embedded within the care delivery systems, the systems of health professional formation and development, and the inertia and resistance to change inherent in huge complex systems (Vincent et al., BMJ Quality & Safety, 20(Suppl 1): i73ei78, 2011). In Japan, the importance of interprofessional collaboration (IPC) in the system of reimbursement system of healthcare cost and in the system of medical function evaluation is both accelerated in the form of so-called “promotion of team-based health care”. It is no exaggeration to say that this is a global trend, not limited to the Japanese healthcare system (World Health Organization, Framework for action on interprofessional education & collaborative practice, 2010). However, empirical elucidation of how IPC affects the quality of healthcare services remains undeveloped and unexplored. This paper presents the results of a survey of the impact on the quality of IPC in the healthcare services. The survey clarified quantitatively and empirically using the well-established evaluation scale with adding the quality and safety evaluation indicators of medical services at various types (acute/convalescent) of medical institutions in Japan. As a survey method, we used a scale obtained by adding a medical safety climate evaluation to the Assessment of Interprofessional Team Collaboration Scale (AITCS), whose reliability and validity have already been verified.