Background

Primary care teams can facilitate access to care by helping patients to determine whether and when care is needed, and coordinating care across multiple clinicians and settings. Appointment availability metrics may or may not capture these contributions, but patients' own ratings of their access to care provide an important alternative view of access that may be more closely related to these key functions of care teams.

Procedures

We used a 2015 telephone survey of 1,395 women veterans to examine associations between key care team functions and patient-rated access to needed care. The care team functions were care coordination, in-person communication (between patient and care team), and phone communication (timely answers to health questions). We controlled for sociodemographics, health status, care settings, and other experience of care measures.

Key findings

Overall, 74% of participants reported always or usually being able to see a provider for routine care, and 68% for urgent care. In adjusted analyses, phone communication was associated with better ratings of access to routine care (odds ratio [OR], 4.31; 95% CI, 2.65-6.98) and urgent care (OR, 2.26; 95% CI, 1.23-4.18). Care coordination was also associated with better ratings of access to routine care (OR, 1.66; 95% CI, 1.01-2.74) and urgent care (OR, 2.26; 95% CI, 1.23-4.18). Associations with in-person communication were not significant.

Conclusions

Access, communication, and care coordination are interrelated. Approaches to improving access may prove counterproductive if they compromise the team's ability to coordinate care, or diminish the team's role as a primary point of contact for patients.

Background

Improving care coordination is a key priority for many healthcare systems. However, initiatives to improve care coordination are complex to implement and have produced mixed results. A better understanding of how to craft and support implementation of effective care coordination strategies is needed.

Objective

To identify and understand the challenges and factors encountered by Patient-Aligned Care Team (PACT) staff in performing care coordination tasks in outpatient clinics in the Veterans Health Administration (VA).

Design

Qualitative study using semi-structured formative evaluation interviews.

Participants

Fourteen interviews with 18 clinical frontline managers and staff from 12 clinic sites across five VA health systems.

Interventions

This paper reports on baseline data collected for the Coordination Toolkit and Coaching (CTAC) project. CTAC aims to improve patients' experience of care coordination within VA primary care and between PACT and other outpatient and community settings.

Approach

We conducted pre-implementation telephone interviews with frontline managers and staff, primarily nurse managers.

Key results

PACT staff described challenges in aligning care coordination priorities across different levels of the VA system, including staff, patients, and leadership. Additionally, PACT staff noted challenges coordinating care both within and outside the VA, and identified resource barriers impeding their care coordination efforts. To address these challenges, staff made several recommendations for improvement, including (1) contingency staffing to address staff burnout; (2) additional PACT training for new staff; (3) clarification of care coordination roles and responsibilities; and (4) and care coordination initiatives that align both with centrally initiated care coordination programs and frontline needs.

Conclusion

In the VA and similarly complex healthcare systems, our findings suggest the need for care coordination strategies that are buttressed by a system-level vision for care coordination, backed up by clear roles and responsibilities for information exchange between primary care staff and other settings, and multidimensional accountability metrics that encompass patient-, staff-, and system-level goals.

Objective

To compare health care system problems or "hassles" experienced by Veterans receiving VA health care only versus those receiving dual care from both VA and non-VA community providers.

Data sources

We collected survey data in 2017-2018 from 2444 randomly selected Veterans with four or more primary care visits in the prior year at one of 12 VA primary care clinics located in four geographically diverse regions of the United States.

Study design

We used baseline surveys from the Coordination Toolkit and Coaching quality improvement project to explore Veterans' experience of hassles (dependent variable), source of health care, self-rated physical and mental health, and sociodemographics.

Data collection

Participants responded to mailed surveys by mail, telephone, or online.

Principal findings

The number of reported hassles ranged from 0 to 16; 79 percent of Veterans reported experiencing one or more hassles. Controlling for sociodemographic characteristics and self-rated physical and mental health, zero-inflated negative binominal regression indicated that dual care users experienced more hassles than VA-only users (adjusted predicted average 5.5 [CI: 5.2, 5.8] vs 4.3 [CI: 4.1, 4.6] hassles [P < .0001]).

Conclusions

Anticipated increases in Veterans accessing community-based care may require new strategies to help VA primary care teams optimize care coordination for dual care users.

Background

Given persistent gaps in coordination of care for medically complex primary care patients, efficient strategies are needed to promote better care coordination.

Objective

The Coordination Toolkit and Coaching project compared two toolkit-based strategies of differing intensity to improve care coordination at VA primary care clinics.

Design

Multi-site, cluster-randomized QI initiative.

Participants

Twelve VA primary care clinics matched in 6 pairs.

Interventions

We used a computer-generated allocation sequence to randomize clinics within each pair to two implementation strategies. Active control clinics received an online toolkit with evidence-based tools and QI coaching manual. Intervention clinics received the online toolkit plus weekly assistance from a distance coach for 12 months.

Main measures

We quantified patient experience of general care coordination using the Health Care System Hassles Scale (primary outcome) mailed at baseline and 12-month follow-up to serial cross-sectional patient samples. We measured the difference-in-difference (DiD) in clinic-level-predicted mean counts of hassles between coached and non-coached clinics, adjusting for clustering and patient characteristics using zero-inflated negative binomial regression and bootstrapping to obtain 95% confidence intervals. Other measures included care coordination QI projects attempted, tools adopted, and patient-reported exposure to projects.

Key results

N = 2,484 (49%) patients completed baseline surveys and 2,481 (48%) completed follow-ups. Six coached clinics versus five non-coached clinics attempted QI projects. All coached clinics versus two non-coached clinics attempted more than one project or projects that were multifaceted (i.e., involving multiple components addressing a common goal). Five coached versus three non-coached clinics used 1-2 toolkit tools. Both the coached and non-coached clinics experienced pre-post reductions in hassle counts over the study period (- 0.42 (- 0.76, - 0.08) non-coached; - 0.40 (- 0.75, - 0.06) coached). However, the DiD (0.02 (- 0.47, 0.50)) was not statistically significant; coaching did not improve patient experience of care coordination relative to the toolkit alone.

Conclusion

Although coached clinics attempted more or more complex QI projects and used more tools than non-coached clinics, coaching provided no additional benefit versus the online toolkit alone in patient-reported outcomes.

Trial registration

ClinicalTrials.gov identifier: NCT03063294.