Seen through the patients' eyes: quality of chronic illness care

Most well-developed healthcare systems are facing the challenge of managing the increasing prevalence of patients with chronic diseases. Comprehensive frameworks, such as the chronic care model (CCM), receive widespread acceptance for improving care processes, clinical outcomes and costs.

The purpose of this study was to explore chronic patients' perceptions of the quality of chronic care and the alignment with the CCM. Since previous research indicated that a patient's assessment may depend on socio-demographic or disease-related characteristics, the relationship between the mean Patient Assessment of Chronic Illness Care (PACIC) score and possible aforementioned predictors was also explored.

An observational, cross-sectional study design was applied, and participants were recruited from the Flemish Patients' Platform (Belgium). An online questionnaire was designed to assess chronic patients' socio-demographic characteristics, medical consumption, quality of life (EuroQol-5D survey) and the perspective of chronic illness care PACIC survey.

The mean overall PACIC score was 2.87 on a maximum score of 5. The highest mean score for the PACIC subscales was found for 'patient activation' (3.26), followed by 'delivery system design/decision support' (3.23), 'problem solving/contextual counselling' (2.86), 'goal setting/tailoring' (2.70) and 'follow-up/coordination' (2.59). Quality of life, as measured by the EuroQol Visual Analogue Scale, had a significantly positive correlation with the mean PACIC score (P = 0.005).

The CCM is considered an important step towards improved care for patients with chronic diseases. However, the findings of this study showed that elements from the CCM have not yet been fully implemented. Aspects such as dealing with problems which interfered with achieving predefined goals, helping patients to set specific goals for their care delivery and arranging follow-ups are less common in today's care of chronic diseases.