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Contrasting effects of geriatric versus general medical multimorbidity on quality of ambulatory care.

ABSTRACT: To determine whether greater burden of geriatric conditions would have contrasting effects on quality of care (QOC) than nongeriatric, general medical conditions.Cross-sectional observation over 1 year of ambulatory care.The Assessing Care of Vulnerable Elders-2 study.Older adults prospectively screened for falls, incontinence, and dementia (N = 644).Participant-level QOC in absolute percentage points calculated using 65 ambulatory care care-process quality indicators (QIs) for 13 general medical and geriatric conditions (#QIs provided/#QIs eligible). Secondary outcomes were geriatric QOC (a subset of 38 geriatric care QIs) and medical QOC (the 27 remaining nongeriatric QIs). Exposure variables were number of six medical conditions (medical comorbidity) and six geriatric conditions (geriatric comorbidity), controlling for age, sex, number of primary care visits, and site.Medical and geriatric comorbidity were unrelated to each other (correlation coefficient = 0.04, P = .27) yet had opposite effects on QOC. Each additional medical condition was associated with a 3.2-percentage point (95% confidence interval (CI) = 2.3-4.2 percentage point) increment in QOC, and each additional geriatric condition was associated with 4.9-percentage point (95% CI = 3.5-6.5 percentage point) decrement in QOC. Participants with greater geriatric comorbidity received poorer medical and geriatric QOC.Greater burden of geriatric conditions, or geriatric multimorbidity, is associated with poorer QOC. Geriatric multimorbidity should be targeted for better care using a comprehensive approach.

SUBMITTER: Min L

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4344809 | biostudies-literature | 2014 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Contrasting effects of geriatric versus general medical multimorbidity on quality of ambulatory care.

Min Lillian L Kerr Eve A EA Blaum Caroline S CS Reuben David D Cigolle Christine C Wenger Neil N

Journal of the American Geriatrics Society 20140814 9

<h4>Objectives</h4>To determine whether greater burden of geriatric conditions would have contrasting effects on quality of care (QOC) than nongeriatric, general medical conditions.<h4>Design</h4>Cross-sectional observation over 1 year of ambulatory care.<h4>Setting</h4>The Assessing Care of Vulnerable Elders-2 study.<h4>Participants</h4>Older adults prospectively screened for falls, incontinence, and dementia (N = 644).<h4>Measurements</h4>Participant-level QOC in absolute percentage points cal ...[more]

PMID: 25123154

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Project description:BackgroundDocumentation in the medical record facilitates the diagnosis and treatment of patients. Few studies have assessed the quality of outpatient medical record documentation, and to the authors' knowledge, none has conclusively determined the correlates of chart documentation. We therefore undertook the present study to measure the rates of documentation of quality of care measures in an outpatient primary care practice setting that utilizes an electronic medical record.MethodsWe reviewed electronic medical records from 834 patients receiving care from 167 physicians (117 internists and 50 pediatricians) at 14 sites of a multi-specialty medical group in Massachusetts. We abstracted information for five measures of medical record documentation quality: smoking history, medications, drug allergies, compliance with screening guidelines, and immunizations. From other sources we determined physicians' specialty, gender, year of medical school graduation, and self-reported time spent teaching and in patient care.ResultsAmong internists, unadjusted rates of documentation were 96.2% for immunizations, 91.6% for medications, 88% for compliance with screening guidelines, 61.6% for drug allergies, 37.8% for smoking history. Among pediatricians, rates were 100% for immunizations, 84.8% for medications, 90.8% for compliance with screening guidelines, 50.4% for drug allergies, and 20.4% for smoking history. While certain physician and patient characteristics correlated with some measures of documentation quality, documentation varied depending on the measure. For example, female internists were more likely than male internists to document smoking history (odds ratio [OR], 1.90; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.27 - 2.83) but were less likely to document drug allergies (OR, 0.51; 95% CI, 0.35 - 0.75).ConclusionsMedical record documentation varied depending on the measure, with room for improvement in most domains. A variety of characteristics correlated with medical record documentation, but no pattern emerged. Further study could lead to targeted interventions to improve documentation.

Project description: To determine whether patient outcomes differ between general internists who graduated from a medical school outside the United States and those who graduated from a US medical school. Observational study. Medicare, USA. 20% national sample of data for Medicare fee-for-service beneficiaries aged 65 years or older admitted to hospital with a medical condition in 2011-14 and treated by international or US medical graduates who were general internists. The study sample for mortality analysis included 1?215?490 admissions to the hospital treated by 44?227 general internists. Patients' 30 day mortality and readmission rates, and costs of care per hospital admission, with adjustment for patient and physician characteristics and hospital fixed effects (effectively comparing physicians within the same hospital). As a sensitivity analysis, we focused on physicians who specialize in the care of patients admitted to hospital ("hospitalists"), who typically work in shifts and whose patients are plausibly quasi-randomized based on the physicians' work schedules. Compared with patients treated by US graduates, patients treated by international graduates had slightly more chronic conditions. After adjustment for patient and physician characteristics and hospital fixed effects, patients treated by international graduates had lower mortality (adjusted mortality 11.2% v 11.6%; adjusted odds ratio 0.95, 95% confidence interval 0.93 to 0.96; P<0.001) and slightly higher costs of care per admission (adjusted costs $1145 (£950; €1080) v $1098; adjusted difference $47, 95% confidence interval $39 to $55, P<0.001). Readmission rates did not differ between the two types of graduates. Similar differences in patient outcomes were observed among hospitalists. Differences in patient mortality were not explained by differences in length of stay, spending level, or discharge location. Data on older Medicare patients admitted to hospital in the US showed that patients treated by international graduates had lower mortality than patients cared for by US graduates.

Project description:BACKGROUND: Multimorbidity is common among ageing populations and it affects the demand for health services. The objective of this study was to examine the relationship between multimorbidity (i.e. the number of diseases and specific combinations of diseases) and the use of general practice services in the Dutch population of 55 years and older. METHODS: Data on diagnosed chronic diseases, contacts (including face-to-face consultations, phone contacts, and home visits), drug prescription rates, and referral rates to specialised care were derived from the Netherlands Information Network of General Practice (LINH), limited to patients whose data were available from 2006 to 2008 (N=32,583). Multimorbidity was defined as having two or more out of 28 chronic diseases. Multilevel analyses adjusted for age, gender, and clustering of patients in general practices were used to assess the association between multimorbidity and service utilization in 2008. RESULTS: Patients diagnosed with multiple chronic diseases had on average 18.3 contacts (95% CI 16.8 19.9) per year. This was significantly higher than patients with one chronic disease (11.7 contacts (10.8 12.6)) or without any (6.1 contacts (5.6 6.6)). A higher number of chronic diseases was associated with more contacts, more prescriptions, and more referrals to specialized care. However, the number of contacts per disease decreased with an increasing number of diseases; patients with a single disease had between 9 to 17 contacts a year and patients with five or more diseases had 5 or 6 contacts per disease per year. Contact rates for specific combinations of diseases were lower than what would be expected on the basis of contact rates of the separate diseases. CONCLUSION: Multimorbidity is associated with increased health care utilization in general practice, yet the increase declines per additional disease. Still, with the expected rise in multimorbidity in the coming decades more extensive health resources are required.

Project description:BACKGROUND: In order to estimate the future demands for health services, the analysis of current utilization patterns of the elderly is crucial. The aim of this study is to analyze ambulatory medical care utilization by elderly patients in relation to age, gender, number of chronic conditions, patterns of multimorbidity, and nursing dependency in Germany. METHODS: Claims data of the year 2004 from 123,224 patients aged 65 years and over which are members of one nationwide operating statutory insurance company in Germany were studied. Multimorbidity was defined as the presence of 3 or more chronic conditions of a list of 46 most prevalent chronic conditions based on ICD 10 diagnoses. Utilization was analyzed by the number of contacts with practices of physicians working in the ambulatory medical care sector and by the number of different physicians contacted for every single chronic condition and their most frequent triadic combinations. Main statistical analyses were multidimensional frequency counts with standard deviations and confidence intervals, and multivariable linear regression analyses. RESULTS: Multimorbid patients had more than twice as many contacts per year with physicians than those without multimorbidity (36 vs. 16). These contact frequencies were associated with visits to 5.7 different physicians per year in case of multimorbidity vs. 3.5 when multimorbidity was not present. The number of contacts and of physicians contacted increased steadily with the number of chronic conditions. The number of contacts varied between 35 and 54 per year and the number of contacted physicians varied between 5 to 7, depending on the presence of individual chronic diseases and/or their triadic combinations. The influence of gender or age on utilization was small and clinically almost irrelevant. The most important factor influencing physician contact was the presence of nursing dependency due to disability. CONCLUSION: In absolute terms, we found a very high rate of utilization of ambulatory medical care by the elderly in Germany, when multimorbidity and especially nursing dependency were present. The extent of utilization by the elderly was related both to the number of chronic conditions and to the individual multimorbidity patterns, but not to gender and almost not to age.

Dataset Information

Contrasting effects of geriatric versus general medical multimorbidity on quality of ambulatory care.

Publications

Contrasting effects of geriatric versus general medical multimorbidity on quality of ambulatory care.

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