Medical care
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Although patient satisfaction is widely used as a quality indicator, most such measures do not account for patient subgroups such as those with psychiatric illness. There is also very little data on satisfaction of psychiatric patients with their medical care. ⋯ Despite VA characteristics that might be thought to improve satisfaction (eg, easier access to specialty mental health services as a result of the integrated VA system), patients with psychiatric disorders are significantly less satisfied than patients without such disorders. Possible explanations include both lower technical quality of care and poorer interpersonal communication between providers and patients with mental illness, including the negative effects of stigma. These findings highlight the need for satisfaction ratings to be case-mix-adjusted, including the incorporation of health and mental health diagnoses, and the need for further research that elucidates the reasons behind lower satisfaction ratings.
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Implementation of the International Statistical Classification of Disease and Related Health Problems, 10th Revision (ICD-10) coding system presents challenges for using administrative data. Recognizing this, we conducted a multistep process to develop ICD-10 coding algorithms to define Charlson and Elixhauser comorbidities in administrative data and assess the performance of the resulting algorithms. ⋯ These newly developed ICD-10 and ICD-9-CM comorbidity coding algorithms produce similar estimates of comorbidity prevalence in administrative data, and may outperform existing ICD-9-CM coding algorithms.
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Patients vary in their willingness and ability to actively participate in medical consultations. Because more active patient participation contributes to improved health outcomes and quality of care, it is important to understand factors affecting the way patients communicate with healthcare providers. ⋯ Patient participation in medical encounters depends on a complex interplay of personal, physician, and contextual factors. Although more educated and white patients tended to be more active participants than their counterparts, the strongest predictors of patient participation were situation-specific, namely the clinical setting and the physician's communicative style. Physicians could more effectively facilitate patient involvement by more frequently using partnership-building and supportive communication. Future research should investigate how the nuances of individual clinical settings (eg, the health condition, time allotted for the visit) impose constraints or opportunities for more effective patient involvement in care.
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Randomized Controlled Trial Clinical Trial
A randomized, controlled trial to improve advance care planning among patients undergoing cardiac surgery.
Although many healthcare providers and researchers consider it necessary to assist patients with end-stage chronic illnesses to plan for the end of life, they tend to avoid discussing end-of-life issues with patients before major surgery. Consequently, surgical patients and their families generally have insufficient knowledge to make plans in case of life-threatening complications. ⋯ The PC-ACP can be an effective approach to advance care planning. Its specificity and relevance to patients' actual medical conditions (as exemplified by its plans for potential complications related to cardiac surgery) can lead to greater patient-surrogate congruence without increasing decisional conflict and anxiety.
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Drug users rely heavily on emergency departments (EDs) for care. Medical and other services in outpatient drug treatment clinics may reduce demand for ED care. ⋯ Greater onsite medical care in low- and moderate-volume drug treatment clinics was associated with less repeated ED use.