Insight into patient dissatisfaction with asthma treatment.

Abstract

WITH THE prevalence of asthma on the rise¹ and the annual cost associated with the disease exceeding $5.8 billion (in 1994 dollars),² providers and payers are interested in evaluating the outcomes of asthma care.³ In the past, clinical and economic outcomes of asthma care received attention.^4-8 However, evaluation of patient care across a range of medical conditions increasingly includes measures of patient satisfaction.^9-18 Managed care organizations have started to incorporate patient satisfaction in their report cards to assess the performance of the plans and the quality of patient management programs.^17,19-21 Added importance of patient satisfaction measures may result from the work of the National Committee for Quality Assurance and the Foundation for Accountability, since these organizations have suggested that health plans use patient satisfaction to evaluate care.^22-25 In this context, the potential is large for measures of patient satisfaction or evidence of dissatisfaction to drive accountability and infer level of quality or value of health care.