What do patients want from their asthma care doctors?

One of the most important causes of asthma morbidity, hospital admissions, and death is non-adherence to prescribed therapy. It is generally assumed that adherence rates can be increased with asthma education, although well conducted studies have not always supported this assumption. Education can be achieved, or can fail, in many ways and no two patients have the same needs or perceived needs. In order to better understand what children with asthma and their parents or caregivers would desire as support from their physician providers, we conducted a survey of nearly 1000 parents of asthmatic children affiliated with the Asthma and Allergy Network. Most of those who responded wanted convenient access to their doctor, more time spent in office visits with greater attention paid to the patient, help in navigating insurance and prescription costs and paperwork, and a partnership in developing care plans. Although most patients were well insured for medical coverage (not a given in the USA), half were dissatisfied with their self-reported asthma control, many were concerned about medication side effects, 60% were not cared for by an asthma specialist, and nearly half did not have an asthma action plan. These results are consistent with data from other published studies and suggest that we still can do much more to meet the needs of children for whom we provide asthma care.