The Effectiveness of Health Care Teams in the National Health Service

patients and caregivers of the team expressed significantly higher levels of
satisfaction with continuous and comprehensive care at one month, and they
continued to express higher levels of satisfaction at six months. The team program
maintained patients at home for significantly more days than the control group, who
were kept in hospital in general wards for longer. Patients of the team received
almost twice as many home visits as the control group and visited the clinic
significantly fewer times.
Increased satisfaction by patients who had access to a primary health care team was
reported to include a higher mean number of social activities, fewer symptoms and
slightly improved overall health. These differences were noted in comparison to
patients who only had access to a physician (Sommers et. al., 2000).
Staff motivation
Primary care teamworking has been reported to improve staff motivation (Wood,
Farrow, & Elliott, 1994). In a study in Spain, Peiro, Gouzalez-Roma & Romos (1992)
showed relationships between work team processes, role clarity, job satisfaction and
leader behaviours. Effectiveness of teamwork was also related to job satisfaction
and mental health of team members. Sommers and colleagues (2000) suggested
that lower rates of hospitalisation for patients of primary health care teams were more
likely to be found in teams where individual members were most satisfied with their
working relationships.
Innovation
Teamwork is reputed to promote innovation in organisations including those in the
health care sector. In order to promote organisational innovation, policy makers and
practitioners are increasingly asking for clarification of the factors that determine
innovation in teams. Many input and process variables have been demonstrated to
predict innovation in teams.
In relation to inputs, there is some evidence that heterogeneity of team composition
is related to team innovation (Hoffman & Maier, 1961; McGrath, 1984; Jackson,
1996). West and Anderson (1996) carried out a longitudinal study of the functioning
of top management teams in 27 hospitals and examined relationships between team
and organisational factors and team innovation. Their results suggested that team
processes best predicted the overall level of team innovation, while the proportion of
innovative team members predicted the rated radicalness of innovations introduced.