Assessment of patient-centred care and its impact on health care quality: a multicentred prospective cohort study

Abstract

BACKGROUND For several decades now, a "patient-centred" clinical approach has been used in primary care consultations. However, although an integrative model of the concept has been established, it still lacks conceptual clarity and there is a great deal of divergence in its assessment so most of the instruments value only part of the principles on which “Patient-Centred Care” is based. This leads to heterogeneous results in terms of the effectiveness of patient-centred interventions and, above all, to the difficulty of applying patient-centred care by medical professionals. OBJECTIVES The aim of this study is to objectively determine which medical professionals provide patient-centred care (PCC) and which do not using tools that assess PCC. And, once this has been determined, compare the adherence to treatment and the results of the clinical parameters in chronic pathologies (High Blood Pressure, Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus and Respiratory disease), the adequacy of treatment in acute pathologies (acute urinary tract infection, acute low back pain and acute pharyngitis and tonsillitis) and patient satisfaction (randomly selected) for 1 year between both groups. DESIGN It is a multicentric prospective cohort study. Based on the analysis of clinical interviews at doctor-patient appointments by external observers, two groups will be formed: professionals who provide "patient-centred care" and professionals who do not. Once the two groups have been divided, each consisting of 49 medical professionals, the results obtained by doctors, in relation to the patients and their pathologies, on different variables will be analysed over the course of one year. The variables analysed will be adherence to treatment and clinical parameters in chronic pathologies, adequacy to treatment in acute pathologies and patient satisfaction in randomised patients for each doctor (...)