Health team function: testing a method for improvement.

Health-care teams are functioning in the delivery of primary care. For purposes of this paper, the health-care team is composed of a primary care physician or physicians working with other health-care providers to deliver primary care. This definition represents an organizational model of health-care teams. Organizational specialists have proposed "team development" processes for improving health team function. This paper reports the results of an initial experiment designed to analyze the results of such a process. A modification of the "health-team development" process was used with one of three comparable teams at a family practice residency. Pre and post-team development data were taken. The team that experienced the modified team development process showed significant differences in the gain scores, compared to the "control" teams. Discussion focuses on the role of organizational technology in health-care teams and avenues of further analysis are presented. The modified format for the team development process is also reported and discussed.