Building Bridges of Healthcare: Identification of Refugee, Immigrant, and Asylum Seeker Provider Resource Needs for Continuity of Care

Refugees are considered to be at risk for poorer health outcomes and it becomes important to understand the barriers for these individuals and providers who work with this population. There was no literature specifically addressing the inconveniences refugee providers face in having patients continue long-term medical care. This paper qualitatively investigated barriers to continuing care by looking from the perspective of professionals who work with these populations. Through conducting interviews with professionals within Arizona working with refugees, immigrants, and asylum seekers using guiding questions, qualitative data was gathered on key areas like communication barriers, cultural competency training needs, logistical hurdles, and resource limitations. The findings reveal that the most significant obstacles faced by providers in achieving continuity of care are related to transferring medical records and referrals, health literacy, data tracking, language interpretation barriers, and transportation limitations. The most common barriers noted were gaps in patient education and health literacy, as well as budgeting and expenditure tracking. In discussion of these barriers, solutions found to be most effective, respectively, are scheduling upcoming appointments in-office, clear after-care visit summaries, community outreach/workshops, centralized tracking documents, and better utilization of cultural health workers. Organizations working with refugee, immigrant, and/or asylum-seeker populations should consider these insights from providers when developing strategies to improve continuity of care. Though there is still a need to expand research on provider tools to ease long-term care to refugee patient populations, this study shows preliminary evidence of effective approaches that can inform policy decisions in refugee health.