Measuring chronic care delivery: patient experiences and clinical performance.

OBJECTIVE

To assess the relationship between clinical care metrics and patient experiences of care among patients with chronic disease.

DESIGN

Cross-sectional survey and clinical performance data.

SETTING

Eighty-nine medical groups across California caring for patients with chronic disease.

PARTICIPANTS

Using patient surveys, we identified 51 129 patients with a chronic disease.

MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES

Using patient surveys, we produced five composite measures of patient experiences of care and self-management support (scale 0-100). Using Health Plan Employer Data and Information Set data, we analyzed care for asthma, diabetes and cardiovascular disease, producing one composite summarizing clinical processes of care and one composite summarizing outcomes of care. We calculated adjusted Spearman's correlation coefficients to assess the relationship between patient experiences of care, clinical processes and clinical outcomes.

RESULTS

Clinical performance was higher for process measures compared with outcomes measures, ranging from 91% for appropriate asthma medication use to 59% for controlling low-density lipoprotein cholesterol in the presence of diabetes. Performance on patient experiences of care measures was the highest for the quality of clinical interactions (88.5) and the lowest for delivery of self-management support (68.8). Three of the 10 patient experience-clinical performance composite correlations were statistically significant. These three correlations involved composites summarizing integration of care and quality of clinical interactions, and ranged from a low of 0.30 to a high of 0.39.

CONCLUSIONS

Chronic care delivery is variable across diseases and domains of care. Improving care integration processes and communication between health-care providers and their patients may lead to improved clinical outcomes.