The short-term effect of patient health status assessment in a health maintenance organization

✍ Scribed by J. Wasson; R. Hays; L. Rubenstein; E. Nelson; J. Leaning; D. Johnson; A. Keller; J. Landgraf; C. Rosenkrans

• Publisher: Springer Netherlands
• Year: 1992
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 677 KB
• Volume: 1
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0962-9343
• DOI: 10.1007/bf00439717

✦ Synopsis

This study was designed to test the short-term effects of health assessment on the process of care and patient satisfaction. The 29 Chart physicians used the Dartmouth COOP Charts to measure their adult patients' health status during a single clinical encounter; the 27 control clinicians used no measure of health status. We compared the change between baseline and post-intervention information for a sample of all study clinicians' patients. Most of the patients were female (67%), well educated (70% had at least a college education) and young (approximately 90% were aged 59 years or younger). We found that the ordering of tests and procedures for women was increased by exposure to the COOP Charts (52% vs. 35%; p < 0.01); the effect in men was not as significant (37% vs. 23%: p = 0.06). Although women reported no change in satisfaction with care, men claimed that the clinician helped in the management of pain (p = 0.02). We conclude that the use of health status measures during a single clinical encounter in an HMO changes clinician test ordering behaviour and may improve the help male patients receive for pain conditions. The long-term impact of these management changes is not known.