Decision making of a hospital based home care team during case management meetings.

The group decision-making process and resultant decision outcomes of an interdisciplinary hospital based home care team was described using an interaction process analysis method and an audit of client treatment plans. The team demonstrated many characteristics of a collaboration stage of group development. Positive, non-task behavior was high and there was little evidence of preplanning or standardization of problems, objectives or treatment. All decision procedures associated with production of high quality decision were used but some may not have been used enough. Approximately 90% of the team's decisions were written in the client treatment plans but evaluation of the decision was difficult. Almost 40% of the objectives were unmeasureable and 30% of the problems were insurmountable. This study suggest that the decision work accomplished by an interdisciplinary health team during case management meetings may be partly a function of how that work is planned, organized, directed and controlled.