Levels of strategies used by care managers to deal with health IT-related barriers

Care managers play an important role in coordinating care for chronically ill patients. They encounter various barriers related to the use of multiple health information technologies (IT) to access and process patient-related information and coordinate patient care. Using combined interviews and observations with 14 care managers in outpatient physician practices and hospitals, we identified different levels of strategies used by care managers in dealing with health IT-related barriers. These include individual (e.g., using a different system to find necessary information), team (e.g., getting help from other care managers) and organizational (e.g., reporting problems to their supervisor) strategies.