Knowledge Sharing Processes And Tools In U.S.A Primary Health Care: Analysis Of Four Case Studies

AbstractThis paper focuses on knowledge sharing as an important area in the study of knowledge management (KM). The paper's primary goal is to examine how health-care practices employ knowledge sharing tools and processes to the benefit of their daily work processes. In addition, the study seeks to understand how knowledge sharing would contribute to practices' performance. Adopting a qualitative approach, four health care practices were selected from within a research network to represent larger and smaller practice with different performance levels, two high-performing practices (HP) and two low-performing practices (LP), using standard clinical and health care practice measures. Data collection and analysis involved several iterative steps including interviews, field notes of observations. Four case studies were developed reflecting how each practice implemented knowledge sharing tools and processes and how this implementation influenced performance. The study found that all of the four practices manifested and implemented knowledge sharing tools including knowledge artifacts; sharing social tools-meetings and communication channels; and processes including training and apprenticeship and communities of practices; however, the level of implementation varied among the four practices. A comparison of the high-performing and low-performing practices showed that even though the high-performing practices implemented and invested more in knowledge sharing, knowledge sharing processes and tools were not completely integrated throughout the practices including the high performing ones. Moreover, in all practices there was little evidence of encouragement to efficiently use knowledge sharing tools either among staff members or between patients and the practice.