ArticleSouth African family practice : official journal of the South African Academy of Family Practice/Primary Care2021
Investigating the effect of the Vula Mobile app on coordination of care and capacity building in district health services, Cape Town: Convergent mixed methods study.
Article in South African family practice : official journal of the South African Academy of Family Practice/Primary Care, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 4 papers.
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Who cites it
4 citing papers in PubMed.
- Non-urgent patients in emergency centres in Western Cape district health services.South African family practice : official journal of the South African Academy of Family Practice/Primary Care · 2025Article
- A survey of doctors' perspectives on critical laboratory result communication in Cape Town, South Africa.The Southern African journal of critical care : the official journal of the Critical Care Society · 2025Article
- Integrating mental health into primary care in Nigeria: Implementation outcomes and clinical impact of theGlobal mental health (Cambridge, England) · 2024Article
- Use of the Vula App to refer patients in the West Coast District: A descriptive exploratory qualitative study.South African family practice : official journal of the South African Academy of Family Practice/Primary Care · 2022Article
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Abstract
backgroundCoordinating care is a defining characteristic of high quality primary care. Currently, very little is known about coordination of care in South Africa's primary care setting. The Vula Mobile app was introduced in 2018 to assist with referring patients from primary care facilities to the Eerste River District Hospital (ERDH) emergency centre. The aim of this study was to evaluate the use of the app and its effect on coordination of care and capacity building of staff.
methodsConvergent mixed methods were used with quantitative data collected from hospital records and the Vula Mobile database, and with qualitative data collected from health professionals in primary care and the district hospital.
resultsOut of 13 321 patients seen in the emergency centre of the district hospital over the 6-month study period, only 1932 (14.5%) of the patients were referred with Vula. Most of these referrals were accepted (85.5%). Sometimes, advice was given to (35.0%) or additional information was requested (27.4%) from the referring doctor. There was little use of Vula in providing other feedback (0.6%). The introduction of the Vula app led to a decrease in the number of inappropriately referred patients (6.7% to 4.2%, p = 0.004). Doctors using the Vula app perceived that it improved care coordination and had the potential for useful feedback.
conclusionVula improved coordination of patients referred from primary care facilities in the Metro Health Services to the district hospital, but missed the opportunity to support continuing professional development and learning. Utilisation of the Vula app should be increased and its potential to provide feedback should be enhanced. Attention should be given to reducing the number of patients self-referred or referred without using the Vula app.
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