Ethnographic analysis shows limited intersectoral coordination in Danish care pathways, indicating the need for reassessment.
Written information exchange is widely used to share information and coordinate care across services. Yet, its coordinating effects remain unclear. The aim of the study was to explore the textually mediated practices through which institutional work was coordinated between social care and healthcare professionals in Danish intersectoral care pathways. We analysed seven Health Statuses, each consisting of a request (LÆ 121) from social care and a reply (LÆ 125) from a general practitioner. These were collected from seven textually mediated pathways of people with disadvantage and examined through an institutional ethnographic text analysis of their textual characteristics and discursive practices. We found that the practices were directly influenced by detailed policy texts. The textually mediated accounts of the client/patients’ situation were brief, highly structured by macro policy documents, and drew on two distinctly different discourses, health and social care respectively. These practices did not support intersectoral coordination and warrant scrutiny of intended and unintended consequences.
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Kamionka et al. (2026) studied this question.
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