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Patients' views about cardiac report cards: a qualitative study
Shawn A Richard1, Shail Rawal, Douglas K Martin
1University of Toronto Joint Centre for Bioethics, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
Insights
Cardiac patients strongly support cardiac care report cards (CRCs) and want them to include patient experiences to improve quality and decision-making.
Area of Science:
- Health Services Research
- Patient-Centered Care
Background:
- Health care report cards are established tools for assessing care quality, particularly in cardiac services.
- Developing effective cardiac care report cards (CRCs) requires understanding stakeholder perspectives.
- Patient views on CRCs are crucial but have been under-researched.
Purpose of the Study:
- To explore and describe cardiac patients' perspectives on cardiac care report cards (CRCs).
Main Methods:
- Qualitative interviews were conducted with 91 cardiac patients across seven Canadian cardiac care centers.
- Patient views on CRCs were systematically analyzed and categorized into themes.
Main Results:
- Patients expressed highly positive attitudes towards CRCs, viewing them as tools for quality improvement, accountability, and informed decision-making.
- Key content preferences included information on other cardiac patients' experiences and a patient-defined framework.
- Patients suggested dissemination methods to maximize CRC utility.
Conclusions:
- Cardiac patients are receptive to CRCs and would utilize them if designed with patient-relevant information.
- Incorporating patient experiences and preferences is essential for developing effective and usable CRCs.
Background:
Health care report cards provide stakeholders with information on health care outcomes and other measures of care, and they are most well developed in cardiac care. A necessary first step to ground the development of cardiac report cards (CRCs) is to incorporate the views of stakeholders. Although the views of experts have been described, the views of cardiac patients, arguably the most important stakeholders, have not yet been described.
Objective:
To describe cardiac patients' views about CRCs.
Methods:
Qualitative interviews were conducted with 91 cardiac patients contacted from seven Canadian cardiac care centres. Participants' views regarding CRCs were analyzed and organized into themes.
Results:
Participants' views were organized into four themes: overall views, purpose, content and dissemination. Participants expressed overwhelmingly positive views about CRCs and thought that CRCs should be used to improve the quality of cardiac care, enhance accountability and improve informed decision-making. They said that they would use CRCs that contained information relevant to patients -- in particular, information about other cardiac patients' experiences. They described a patient-derived framework for the content of CRCs. Participants also described dissemination formats and vehicles that would increase the usefulness of CRCs.
Conclusions:
The cardiac patients in the present study had positive attitudes about CRCs and would use them if they were designed to be relevant to patients. In particular, the participants wanted CRCs to provide information about other cardiac patients' experiences.
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