Interdisciplinary care teams (ICTs) are increasingly used to care for very complex individuals, such as those with significant mental health and behavioral challenges. A recent joint study by public health researchers at the University of Iowa and the University of Minnesota revealed some teamwork factors in ICTs producing high-quality care.

The study, co-authored by Xi Zhu, UI associate professor of health management and policy, and Douglas Wholey, professor emeritus at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health, was published in Health Services Research.

The study examined a type of ICTs for clients with severe mental illness, known as Assertive Community Treatment teams. In particular, the study looked at how their performance is influenced by two main factors: expertise redundancy and what’s known as transactive memory accuracy. Expertise redundancy — the extent to which team members possess highly overlapping knowledge — can complicate a team’s knowledge structure because it reduces role clarity. Transactive memory accuracy is the extent to which team members accurately recognize experts in relevant knowledge domains. It helps team members get assistance from team members who have needed expertise, which leads to better quality decision making, task performance, and care.

The effects of expertise redundancy and transactive memory on ICTs performance were measured by examining their effect on the hospitalization of clients for mental illness.

Overall, teams with low expertise redundancy and the ability to accurately recognize who was an expert in areas had fewer mental health-related hospitalizations. Further, the study showed that transactive memory accuracy had a stronger positive relationship with team performance when expertise redundancy was higher, indicating that it could serve as a cognitive tool for mitigating the negative effect of a group’s complex knowledge structure.

“Both the design and implementation of ICTs are critical for delivering high-quality care,” says Zhu. “The study shows that ICTs with clearly specified knowledge structure and team processes that assure accurate recognition of a team member’s expertise can achieve superior performance.”

Zhu and Wholey are continuing their research on mental health ICTs to examine how team design and leadership affects transactive memory accuracy and how information exchange processes affect team member outcomes, such as individual performance, satisfaction, and team identification.

The study was funded by the National Science Foundation.

This article, written by Charlie Plain, is used courtesy of the University of Minnesota School of Public Health.