Assessing the Effectiveness of Interprofessional Collaboration in Reducing Patient Mortality in Hospitals

Posted: Jan 10, 2023

• Faith Nolan
• Olive Barrett
• Gianna Alvarez

Abstract

Interprofessional collaboration represents a cornerstone of modern healthcare delivery, yet traditional assessment methods have struggled to capture its complex dynamics and quantify its impact on patient outcomes. This research addresses this methodological gap by introducing a computational framework that leverages digital traces of collaboration embedded within hospital information systems to provide objective, granular, and real-time assessment of interprofessional teamwork. The novelty of our approach lies in its integration of techniques from computational social science, network analysis, and natural language processing to model collaboration as a dynamic, multi-dimensional construct. Our methodology captures both the structural aspects of collaboration and the qualitative dimensions including the content, timing, and context of interactions. The research was guided by three primary questions exploring how digital collaboration patterns can be systematically extracted, what dimensions most strongly correlate with reduced patient mortality, and how collaboration resilience mediates the relationship between collaboration and patient outcomes.