Carol P. Roth

Craig Conlon, MD, PhD; Steven Asch MD, MPH; Mark Hanson, PhD; Andrew Avins, MD, MPH; Barbara Levitan; Carol Roth, BSN, MPH; Michael Robbins, PhD; Mich

Our aim was to test the feasibility of a set of quality of care indicators for urinary incontinence and at the same time measure the care provided to women with urinary incontinence in 2 clinical settings. This was a pilot test of a set of quality of care indicators. A total of 20 quality of care indicators were previously developed using the RAND Appropriateness Method. These quality of care indicators were used to measure care received for 137 women with a urinary incontinence diagnosis in a 120-physician hospital based multispecialty medical group. We also performed an abstraction of 146 patient records from primary care offices in Southern California. These charts were previously used as part of ACOVE (Assessing Care of Vulnerable Elders Project). As a post-hoc secondary analysis, the 2 populations were compared with respect to quality, as measured by compliance with the quality of care indicators. In the ACOVE population, 37.7% of patients with urinary incontinence underwent a pelvic examination vs 97.8% in the multispecialty medical group. Only 15.6% of cases in the multispecialty medical group and 14.2% in ACOVE (p = 0.86) had documentation that pelvic floor exercises were offered. Relatively few women with a body mass index of greater than 25 kg/m(2) were counseled about weight loss in either population (20.9% multispecialty medical group vs 26.1% ACOVE, p = 0.76). For women undergoing sling surgery, documentation of counseling about risks was lacking and only 9.3% of eligible cases (multispecialty medical group only) had documentation of the risks of mesh. Quality of care indicators are a feasible means to measure the care provided to women with urinary incontinence. Care varied by population studied and yet deficiencies in care were prevalent in both patient populations studied.

Falls are the leading cause of unintentional injury among US older adults. Guidelines recommend screening patients for fall risk, and providing exercise for patients with gait and balance problems. We redesigned an electronic clinical reminder to improve identification and management of Veterans at high risk for falls, and piloted the reminder in 3 Veterans Health Administration community-based outpatient clinics. This project had 5 key elements: (1) case finding, (2) efficient collection of condition-specific clinical data, (3) clinical reminders to prompt appropriate care, (4) patient and family education materials, and (5) primary care provider (PCP) decision support/PCP and staff education. We reviewed clinical reminder reports, interviewed nurses and PCPs, directly observed clinic operations, and watched nurses and PCPs use the clinical reminder with a dummy patient record to determine areas in need of improvement. Over a 1-year period, 2943 Veterans aged 75 years and older visited the 3 clinics, with 2264 screened for fall risk by the intake nurse, yielding 472 positive screens. PCPs completed gait, balance, and strength evaluations on 231 screen-positive Veterans. Among the 162 Veterans who had a gait, balance, or strength problem on evaluation and were free of advanced dementia or poor prognosis, 39 were offered physical therapy or exercise. PCPs and nurses held divergent opinions about the clinical reminder and the project, with PCPs more negative and nurses more positive. A fall prevention clinical reminder can be incorporated into routine care, but low referral rates to exercise programs suggest that further quality improvement cycles are needed.

Background: Care for falls and urinary incontinence (UI) among older patients is inadequate. One possible explanation is that physicians provide less recommended care to patients who are not as concerned about their falls and UI. Objective: To test whether patient-reported severity for 2 geriatric conditions, falls, and UI, is associated with quality of care. Research Design: Prospective cohort study of elders with falls and/or fear of falling (n = 384) and UI (n = 163). Subjects: Participants in the Assessing Care of Vulnerable Elders-2 Study (2002–2003), which evaluated an intervention to improve the care for falls and UI among older (age, ≥75) ambulatory care patients with falls/fear of falling or UI. Measures: Falls Efficacy Scale (FES) and the Incontinence Quality of Life surveys measured at baseline, quality of care measured by a 13-month medical record abstraction. Results: There was a small difference in falls quality scores across the range of FES, with greater patient-perceived falls severity associated with better odds of passing falls quality indicators (OR: 1.11 [95% CI: 1.02–1.21] per 10-point increment in FES). Greater patient-perceived UI severity (Incontinence Quality of Life score) was not associated with better quality of UI care. Conclusions: Although older persons with greater patient-perceived falls severity receive modestly better quality of care, those with more distressing incontinence do not. For both conditions, however, even the most symptomatic patients received less than half of recommended care. Low patient-perceived severity of condition is not the basis of poor care for falls and UI.

The electronic health record (EHR) is seen by many as an ideal vehicle for measuring quality of health care and monitoring ongoing provider performance. It is anticipated that the availability of EHR-extracted data will allow quality assessment without the expensive and time-consuming process of medical record abstraction. A review of the data requirements for the indicators in the Quality Assessment Tools system suggests that only about a third of the indicators would be readily accessible from EHR data. Other factors involving complexity of required data elements, provider documentation habits, and EHR variability make the task of quality measurement more difficult than may be appreciated. Accurately identifying eligible cases for quality assessment and validly scoring those cases with EHR-extracted data will pose significant challenges but could potentially plummet the cost and therefore expand the use of quality assessment.

Background While falls and urinary incontinence are prevalent among older patients, who sometimes rely on proxies to provide their health information, the validity of proxy reports of concern about falls and urinary incontinence remains unknown. Methods Telephone interviews with 43 consecutive patients with falls or fear of falling and/or bothersome urinary incontinence and their proxies chosen by patients as most knowledgeable about their health. The questionnaire included items derived from the Medical Outcomes Study Short Form 12 (SF-12), a scale assessing concerns about urinary incontinence (UI), and a measure of fear of falling, the Falls Efficacy Scale (FES). Scores were estimated using items asking the proxy perspective (6 items from the SF-12, 10 items from a UI scale, and all 10 FES items). Proxy and patient scores were compared using intraclass correlation coefficients (ICC, one-way model). Variables associated with absolute agreement between patients and proxies were explored. Results Patients had a mean age of 81 years (range 75–93) and 67% were female while proxies had a mean age of 70 (range 42–87) and 49% were female. ICCs were 0.63 for the SF-12, 0.52 for the UI scale, and 0.29 for the FES. Proxies tended to understate patients' general health and incontinence concern, but overstate patients' concern about falling. Proxies who lived with patients and those who more often see patients more closely reflected patient FES scores compared to those who lived apart or those who saw patients less often. Internal consistency reliability of proxy responses was 0.62 for the SF-12, 0.86 for the I-QOL, and 0.93 for the FES. In addition, construct validity of the proxy FES scale was supported by greater proxy-perceived fear of falling for patients who received medical care after a fall during the past 12 months (p < .05). Conclusion Caution should be exercised when using proxies as a source of information about older patients' health perceptions. Questions asking about proxies' views yield suboptimal agreement with patient responses. However, proxy scales of UI and fall concern are internally consistent and may provide valid independent information.