Mobile Phones and Patient Referral in Thai Rural Healthcare: A Structuration View

• In Event: Mobile Health

Abstract

This study employs a structuration view to examine the interaction between the paper-based patient referral system and the use of mobile phones by healthcare staff in the context of rural Thailand. Interviews were conducted with 31 healthcare staff from hospitals and community health centers to examine how their use of mobile phones affected, changed, or modified the existing patient referral system. The material indicates that healthcare staff used their personal mobile phones for patient referral because they could quickly reach specific personal contacts in the hospitals and provide nuanced contextual information that was not possible to communicate via the formal paper-based communication system. The practices capture the nascent quasi-institutionalization of mobile-assisted referrals, and provide insights into how existing organizational rules, cultural, norms, resources, and social relationships shape, and are likely to be shaped by mobile communication.

Authors

• Rich Ling, Nanyang Technological U/Telenor

• Thanomwong Poorisat

• Arul Chib, Nanyang Technological Univ