Patient-Centered Outcomes Measurement: Does It Require Information From Patients?

Purpose: Since collecting outcome measure data from patients can be expensive, time-consuming, and subject to memory and nonresponse bias, we sought to learn whether outcomes important to patients can be obtained from data in the electronic health record (EHR) or health insurance claims. Methods: We previously identified 21 outcomes rated important by patients who had advanced imaging tests for back or abdominal pain. Telephone surveys about experiencing those outcomes 1 year after their test from 321 people consenting to use of their medical record and claims data were compared with audits of the participants’ EHR progress notes over the time period between the imaging test and survey completion. We also compared survey data with algorithmically extracted data from claims files for outcomes for which data might be available from that source. Results: Of the 16 outcomes for which patients’ survey responses were considered to be the best information source, only 2 outcomes for back pain and 3 for abdominal pain had kappa scores above a very modest level of ≥ 0.2 for chart audit of EHR data and none for algorithmically obtained EHR/claims data. Of the other 5 outcomes for which claims data were considered to be the best information source, only 2 outcomes from patient surveys and 3 outcomes from chart audits had kappa scores ≥ 0.2. Conclusions: For the types of outcomes studied here, medical record or claims data do not provide an adequate source of information except for a few outcomes where patient reports may be less accurate

Patient Experience and Physician/Staff Satisfaction in Transforming Medical Homes

Importance: To assess the association between degree of change in medical home transformation and the satisfaction of patients, physicians, and other staff with the experience. Study Design: Cross-sectional surveys of lead physicians and patients. Methods: Lead physicians in the first 108 primary care clinics in Minnesota certified as patient-centered medical homes (PCMHs) were asked about the presence and change over the past 3 years of medical home-related practice systems, as well as the job satisfaction of their physicians and staff. Patients in 54 of these clinics were surveyed using the CG-CAHPS (Clinician-Group Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems) questions about their experience. Key Results: The extent of change in systems over time was significantly correlated with reported positive changes in physician (0.29, P = .002) and staff (0.27, P = .005) job satisfaction, but not with the number of systems. System change was negatively correlated with patient reports of access to care (—0.43, P = .001) but unrelated to their experience with physicians and staff. Conclusions: These results add to a minimal literature on these important topics by suggesting improved physician and staff satisfaction, while highlighting the importance of the amount of change on both their satisfaction and that of patients. There may be a need to be particularly careful that medical home changes do not cause deterioration in patient access. While there is currently a rush to encourage and facilitate the transformation of primary care practices into patient-centered medical homes (PCMHs), surprisingly little is known about the impact of such a change on the experiences and satisfaction of either patients or healthcare personnel. In 2010, Hoff described the foundation for the PCMH as shaky, primarily because so little was known about whether either patients or physicians find it attractive.1 In 2012, he published a systematic review of studies through 2010, finding only a few studies of patient or clinician satisfaction; their results presented a mixed picture.2 The main positive results were from studies in Group Health Puget Sound, atypical because of salaried physicians and a common budget between health plan and medical group.3,4 Evaluation of the 36 diverse family practices in the National Demonstration Project was especially troubling, since after 2 years of work on transformation, patients in these practices reported a worse experience with care than at baseline.5,6 Since then, studies of Canadian or safety-net clinics have found positive results for patient or clinician satisfaction, but not since 2010 has this topic been addressed regarding typical United States practices that are becoming PCMHs.7-

Organizational Factors and Change Strategies Associated With Medical Home Transformation

There is limited information about how to transform primary care practices into medical homes. The research team surveyed leaders of the first 132 primary care practices in Minnesota to achieve medical home certification. These surveys measured priority for transformation, the presence of medical home practice systems, and the presence of various organizational factors and change strategies. Survey response rates were 98% for the Change Process Capability Questionnaire survey and 92% for the Physician Practice Connections survey. They showed that 80% to 100% of these certified clinics had 15 of the 18 organizational factors important for improving care processes and that 60% to 90% had successfully used 16 improvement strategies. Higher priority for this change (P = .001) and use of more strategies (P = .05) were predictive of greater change in systems. Clinics contemplating medical home transformation should consider the factors and strategies identified here and should be sure that such a change is indeed a high priority for them

Concordance Between Life Satisfaction and Six Elements of Well-Being Among Respondents to a Health Assessment Survey, HealthPartners Employees, Minnesota, 2011

Introduction: We assessed and tracked perceptions of well-being among employees of member companies of HealthPartners, a nonprofit health care provider and health insurance company in Bloomington, Minnesota. The objective of our study was to determine the concordance between self-reported life satisfaction and a construct of subjective well-being that comprised 6 elements of well-being: emotional and mental health, social and interpersonal status, financial status, career status, physical health, and community support. Methods: We analyzed responses of 23,268 employees (of 37,982 invitees) from 6 HealthPartners companies who completed a health assessment in 2011. We compared respondents’ answers to the question, “How satisfied are you with your life?” with their indicators of well-being where “high life satisfaction” was defined as a rating of 9 or 10 on a scale of 0 (lowest) to 10 (highest) and “high level of well-being” was defined as a rating of 9 or 10 for 5 or 6 of the 6 indicators of well-being. Result We found a correlation between self-reported life satisfaction and the number of well-being elements scored as high (9 or 10) (r = 0.62, P < .001); 73.6% of the respondents were concordant (high on both or high on neither). Although 82.9% of respondents with high overall well-being indicated high life satisfaction, only 34.7% of those indicating high life satisfaction reported high overall well-being. Conclusion: The correlation between self-reported life satisfaction and our well-being measure was strong, and members who met our criterion of high overall well-being were likely to report high life satisfaction. However, many respondents who reported high life satisfaction did not meet our criterion for high overall well-being, which suggests that either they adapted to negative life circumstances or that our well-being measure did not identify their sources of life satisfaction

Challenges of Medical Home Transformation Reported by 118 Patient-Centered Medical Home (PCMH) Leaders

Background: Little is known about the most important organizational factors and strategies for transforming primary care clinics into patient-centered medical homes (PCMHs), so we studied this in newly certified medical homes in Minnesota. Methods: We collected the following information from the first 120 clinics serving adults to be certified: (1) a 105-item survey about the presence and function of practice systems now and 3 years ago; (2) standardized composite clinic performance measures for diabetes and cardiovascular disease; and (3) a 44-item survey about PCMH transformation derived from 31 qualitative interviews about barriers, facilitators, and change strategies with participants from 9 diverse clinics. Results: The response rates for the systems survey was 92.5% and was 98.3% for the survey about transformation. Nearly all the items from the qualitative interviews identified as potentially important for transformation were strongly endorsed. Eighteen items in this survey also correlated significantly (P = \u3c.01) with change in practice systems at the level of r ≥ 0.20. However, there was little relationship between these items and either absolute levels of systems or performance on composite measures of diabetes or vascular disease quality outcomes. Conclusions: Many items in the survey about transformation seem to have face validity for leaders of certified PCMHs and to be associated with the extent to which their clinics have made systems changes. While clinics may need to find their own unique path to transformation, the items identified here should be considered in those decisions

The Effect of Achieving Patient-Reported Outcome Measures on Satisfaction

Objective: To determine how frequently patients with advanced imaging for back or abdominal pain achieve outcomes that are identified by patients as important and whether those achieving those outcomes are more satisfied. Methods: Cross-sectional analysis of survey responses from patients of an 800-physician multi-specialty group in Minnesota in 2013. A total of 201 patients with abdominal pain and 167 patients with back pain 1 year earlier that was serious enough for a computed tomography or magnetic resonance imaging scan (67% of those contacted). The main outcomes were the frequency of occurrence of 19 outcomes previously identified by patients as important, plus satisfaction with the results of care. Results: The majority of patients surveyed had achieved most of the desired outcomes. For abdominal pain, 17 of 19 of the desired outcomes were achieved by \u3e50% of patients, while 11 of 19 desired outcomes were achieved by \u3e50% of patients with back pain. Seven of the desired outcomes were significantly associated with satisfaction. Conclusion: Achieving outcomes important to patients is associated with greater patient satisfaction. Such measures are potentially valuable measures of quality

It Is Time to Ask Patients What Outcomes Are Important to Them

Objectives: To identify the outcomes desired by patients (and their family members) with abdominal or back pain and to compare patient and physician opinions regarding the importance of each outcome. Study Design: Mixed methods. Methods: After identifying 21 potentially important outcomes from the literature and telephone interviews with patients and family members, we asked 40 patients, 11 family members, and 11 primary care physicians in telephone interviews to rate the importance of each outcome to patients on a scale of 1 to 5 scale (5 = most important), stratified by pain location. Results: Mean patient ratings of the 21 outcomes ranged from 3.3 to 5, with the average rating across all items higher for patients with back pain than those with abdominal pain (4.50 vs 4.09; P = .049). Physicians rated the importance of these outcomes to patients significantly lower than the patients did for both abdominal pain (4.1 vs 3.5; P = .04) and back pain (4.5 vs 3.6; P = .0003). Family member ratings were similar to those of the patients (4.3 vs 4.2; P = .8), whereas physicians rated the importance to patients to be an average of 0.6 points lower than the ratings of patients for abdominal pain and 0.8 points lower for back pain. Conclusions: Many outcomes are important to patients and their family members, but they mostly represent quality-of-life events rather than the symptom and function measures heretofore focused on by researchers. Physicians appear to rate most of these outcomes somewhat lower in importance

Patient-Centered Outcomes Measurement: Does It Require Information From Patients?

Purpose: Since collecting outcome measure data from patients can be expensive, time-consuming, and subject to memory and nonresponse bias, we sought to learn whether outcomes important to patients can be obtained from data in the electronic health record (EHR) or health insurance claims. Methods: We previously identified 21 outcomes rated important by patients who had advanced imaging tests for back or abdominal pain. Telephone surveys about experiencing those outcomes 1 year after their test from 321 people consenting to use of their medical record and claims data were compared with audits of the participants’ EHR progress notes over the time period between the imaging test and survey completion. We also compared survey data with algorithmically extracted data from claims files for outcomes for which data might be available from that source. Results: Of the 16 outcomes for which patients’ survey responses were considered to be the best information source, only 2 outcomes for back pain and 3 for abdominal pain had kappa scores above a very modest level of ≥ 0.2 for chart audit of EHR data and none for algorithmically obtained EHR/claims data. Of the other 5 outcomes for which claims data were considered to be the best information source, only 2 outcomes from patient surveys and 3 outcomes from chart audits had kappa scores ≥ 0.2. Conclusions: For the types of outcomes studied here, medical record or claims data do not provide an adequate source of information except for a few outcomes where patient reports may be less accurate

Patient-Centered Outcomes Measurement: Does It Require Information From Patients?

Purpose: Since collecting outcome measure data from patients can be expensive, time-consuming, and subject to memory and nonresponse bias, we sought to learn whether outcomes important to patients can be obtained from data in the electronic health record (EHR) or health insurance claims. Methods: We previously identified 21 outcomes rated important by patients who had advanced imaging tests for back or abdominal pain. Telephone surveys about experiencing those outcomes 1 year after their test from 321 people consenting to use of their medical record and claims data were compared with audits of the participants’ EHR progress notes over the time period between the imaging test and survey completion. We also compared survey data with algorithmically extracted data from claims files for outcomes for which data might be available from that source. Results: Of the 16 outcomes for which patients’ survey responses were considered to be the best information source, only 2 outcomes for back pain and 3 for abdominal pain had kappa scores above a very modest level of ≥ 0.2 for chart audit of EHR data and none for algorithmically obtained EHR/claims data. Of the other 5 outcomes for which claims data were considered to be the best information source, only 2 outcomes from patient surveys and 3 outcomes from chart audits had kappa scores ≥ 0.2. Conclusions: For the types of outcomes studied here, medical record or claims data do not provide an adequate source of information except for a few outcomes where patient reports may be less accurate