Continuity of care (COC) and amyloid-β PET scan: the CARE-IDEAS study

In this study, we linked Medicare claims data to the CARE-IDEAS cohort to evaluate changes in care continuity before and after amyloid-β PET scan and examined whether COC changes varied for people with elevated vs. not elevated scan results and for those with better caregiver-health care team communication. Our three main findings are as follows: (1) mean care continuity overall increased slightly following the scan, but this change was not statistically significant; (2) pre-post changes in care continuity were comparable for those with elevated and not elevated scan results; and (3) caregiver communication with the care team did not appear to modify pre-post changes in care continuity.

Prior studies have demonstrated that low care continuity adversely impacts clinical outcomes and contributes to unnecessary utilization [10, 19]. Among other factors, variation in care continuity is driven by access, care-seeking behaviors, and communication between care providers [20, 21]. We hypothesized that care continuity would change following a receipt of amyloid-β PET scan, with greater changes among those with an elevated scan result due to reductions in care-seeking given the greater certainty of AD diagnosis. While we found improvement in overall care continuity post-scan, this association was not significant, and did not differ by scan result or caregiver-perceived communication. The lack of observed associations between scan result, caregiver-perceived communication and care continuity may be due to several factors. First, while we used a 1-year CoC assessment period to characterize care patterns while maximizing inclusion of study participants, patterns of CoC may differ over longer assessment periods. Second, in this cohort of Medicare beneficiaries, healthcare access may be more equitable than in other cohorts, resulting in more established care patterns that is unlikely to be impacted by the results of any single diagnostic test or procedure. Finally, while caregiver communication with the care team represents one dimension of information flow, other dimensions, such as communication across provider groups for a complex patient population such as the CARE-IDEAS cohort, may be more impactful but were not available in our dataset.

Our study has several limitations worth noting. First, our study population comprises a subsample of a larger population of research study volunteers, the majority of whom are white and college-educated. Given that care fragmentation may disproportionately affect people with lower socioeconomic strata, results may not generalize to populations most likely to be negatively impacted by lack of coordination [22]. Second, the Bice-Boxerman COC score is estimated from dispersion of visits across providers and may not fully capture other important aspects of continuity, like direct provider-to-provider communication [5], or other important aspects of care quality, like adherence to clinical guidelines. Therefore, even a perfect COC score may not translate to ideal care for a given individual. Third, we chose a 1-year period before and after the scan to ensure temporal proximity of COC changes and limit selection bias associated with longer observation time requirements. However, changes in care continuity following scan results may require additional time to become observable. Additionally, we excluded participants who died during the follow-up period, a population who may have had different patterns of care continuity prior to death. Finally, while we were able to adjust for a detailed list of confounders using baseline data from IDEAS, our estimates may be influenced by residual confounding.

There is currently no consensus on the ideal level of care continuity as measured by healthcare encounters in patients with cognitive impairment. Future work is needed to understand how continuity varies across populations with MCI or dementia, and whether this variation is associated with access to and utilization of appropriate care.

留言 (0)

沒有登入
gif