Patient Perspectives on Consistency of Medical Care With Recommended Care in Type 2 Diabetes
- Jafar S. Tabrizi, MD,
- Andrew J. Wilson, PHD,
- Peter K. O’Rourke, PHD and
- Eleanor T. Coyne, MD, PHD
- From the School of Population Health, University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia
- Address correspondence and reprint requests to Jafar S. Tabrizi, Public Health Building, School of Population Health, University of Queensland, Herston Road, Herston, QLD 4006, Brisbane, Australia. E-mail: js.tabrizi{at}gmail.com
Technical quality in health care refers to clinical or disease-specific aspects of care (1) and deals with what the patient receives relative to what is known to be effective, largely reflecting issues related to health care providers. It is widely accepted that improving disease-specific aspects of care improves health outcomes (2–4). This study determined technical quality for individuals with type 2 diabetes, one of the most common chronic diseases in Australia, based on the degree of adherence to type 2 diabetes management guidelines in Queensland, Australia. Medical records can be a flawed and impractical source of information on quality of care (5,6), while patient-based reports are independent of the practitioner and practice setting and provide a valuable assessment of the quality of care for chronic diseases from the patients’ perspective (7). However, patient reports rely on the individual being aware of what care was provided and may therefore be subject to recall bias.
RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS—
Data were obtained from a cross-sectional survey of type 2 diabetes quality of care in 2005. Of the random sample of 1,500 members of Diabetes Australia-Queensland (DAQ), 603 adult subjects with diagnosed type 2 diabetes responded (40.2%). Nonresponders were slightly younger (P < 0.001) than study participants but matched on sex (P > …
