Table 5 Patients as care coordinators

“I had to be vigilant. And I had to stay on task. And I had to find help […] You know, I have a vested interest in taking care of myself.”

“So when you think about how to integrate the care and how to have it run smoothly, I think that works best if they’re a pretty motivated patient. They can communicate across systems.”

“I’m taking a more active role. I didn’t know, really, what to expect or how to get the train to go the way I wanted it to go, so I kind of let them do the thinking and the planning. And this time, I made it clear from the very first visit that I wanted to look at maintenance.”

“So, for the patient who wants to integrate both into one, I think it then falls on the patient to be carrying […] the information from the acupuncturist to their primary care provider. So it falls on the patient to become that coordinator. And I think, for the most part, patients struggle with that, especially if they’re already dealing with, you know, lots of different health conditions […] it essentially stays un-integrated, unless the patient actively makes that happen.”