Better self-care through co-care? A latent profile analysis of primary care patients' experiences of e-health–supported chronic care management

BACKGROUND: Efficient self-care of chronic conditions requires that an individual's resources be optimally combined with healthcare's resources, sometimes supported by e-health services (i.e., co-care). This calls for a system perspective of self-care to determine to what extent it involves demanding or unnecessary tasks and whether role clarity, needs support, and goal orientation are sufficient. This study aims to explore typical configurations of how the co-care system is experienced by individuals with chronic conditions who used an e-health service supporting self-monitoring and digital communication with primary care. METHOD: We performed a latent profile analysis using questionnaire data from two waves (7 months apart) involving 180 of 308 eligible patients who pilot-tested an e-health service for co-care at a Swedish primary care center. The five subscales of the Distribution of Co-Care Activities (DoCCA) scale were used to create profiles at Time 1 (T1) and Time 2 (T2). Profiles were described based on sociodemographic variables (age, gender, education level, and health condition) and compared based on exogenous variables (self-rated health, satisfaction with healthcare, self-efficacy in self-care, and perceptions of the e-health service). RESULTS: We identified four typical configurations of co-care experiences at T1: strained, neutral, supportive, and optimal. Patients with optimal and supportive profiles had higher self-rated health, self-efficacy in self-care, and satisfaction with healthcare than patients with strained and neutral profiles. Slightly more than half transitioned to a similar or more positive profile at T2, for which we identified five profiles: unsupportive, strained, neutral, supportive, and optimal. Patients with optimal and supportive profiles at T2 had higher self-efficacy in self-care and satisfaction with healthcare than the other profiles. The optimal profiles also had higher self-rated health than all other profiles. Members of the optimal and supportive profiles perceived the effectiveness of the e-health service as more positive than the unsupportive and strained profile members. DISCUSSION: Primary care patients' co-care profiles were primarily distinguished by their experiences of needs support, goal orientation, and role clarity. Patients with more positive co-care experiences also reported higher self-rated health, self-efficacy in self-care, and satisfaction with healthcare, as well as more positive experiences of the e-health service.