How to conceptualize and measure patient-experienced quality in integrated care? Development of a valid and reliable patient reported experience measure.

Short Summary

Patients who are discharged from hospital often experience challenges as the responsibility for treatment, care, and rehabilitation shifts to multiple actors in both primary and secondary sectors. To ensure high quality of such care, and patient involvement in integrated care, we need to draw on patients' experiences in a valid and structured way because each individual patient is the only person who has information about all aspects of his or her specific care journey.

Rationale

Patients who are discharged from hospital often experience challenges as the responsibility for treatment, care, and rehabilitation shifts to multiple actors in both primary and secondary sectors. To address these challenges, focus has increased on developing a coherent health care system that is able to integrate care across sectors and across diagnosis, treatment, rehabilitation, exercise training, and health promotion. To ensure high quality of such care, and patient involvement in integrated care, we need to draw on patients' experiences in a valid and structured way because each individual patient is the only person who has information about all aspects of his or her specific care journey. A reliable cross sectorial patient-reported experience measure (PREM) will structure and express this invaluable information but there exists no validated, reliable questionnaire that captures the concept of patient-experienced quality in integrated care. This project aims to develop such a PREM to enable valid, scientifically reliable data in quality improvement. This may allow for systematically uncovering areas for improvement and evaluating the effect of improvement initiatives for coordination across health care sectors including treatment, rehabilitation, exercise training, and health promotion.

Description of the cohort

Participants are recruited from the department of Gynecology- and Obstetrics, OUH and the department of Fysio- and Ocuppational therapy, Slagelse and Næstved Hospitals and we will recruit a heterogeneous group of participants experiencing cross-sectorial transitions. Participants are selected to reflect difference in sex, age, and diagnosis.

Inclusion criteria

• Age > 18 years

• Currently or has recently been (within the last month) treated in secondary care AND has contact with primary care (e.g., home care, nursing, or rehabilitation)

Exclusion criteria

• Patients who are not cognitively incapable of completing the questionnaire

• Patients who do not read and write Danish sufficiently to complete the questionnaire

• Terminally ill patients, and others who are deemed too vulnerable to include

Data and biological material

Data consists of pre-existing literature, interviews, and questionnaire data.