Patients' views about cardiac report cards: a qualitative study.
BACKGROUND
Health care report cards provide stakeholders with information on health care outcomes and other measures of care, and they are most well developed in cardiac care. A necessary first step to ground the development of cardiac report cards (CRCs) is to incorporate the views of stakeholders. Although the views of experts have been described, the views of cardiac patients, arguably the most important stakeholders, have not yet been described.


OBJECTIVE
To describe cardiac patients' views about CRCs.


METHODS
Qualitative interviews were conducted with 91 cardiac patients contacted from seven Canadian cardiac care centres. Participants' views regarding CRCs were analyzed and organized into themes.


RESULTS
Participants' views were organized into four themes: overall views, purpose, content and dissemination. Participants expressed overwhelmingly positive views about CRCs and thought that CRCs should be used to improve the quality of cardiac care, enhance accountability and improve informed decision-making. They said that they would use CRCs that contained information relevant to patients -- in particular, information about other cardiac patients' experiences. They described a patient-derived framework for the content of CRCs. Participants also described dissemination formats and vehicles that would increase the usefulness of CRCs.


CONCLUSIONS
The cardiac patients in the present study had positive attitudes about CRCs and would use them if they were designed to be relevant to patients. In particular, the participants wanted CRCs to provide information about other cardiac patients' experiences.
Richard
Shawn A
SA
University of Toronto Joint Centre for Bioethics, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
Rawal
Shail
S
Martin
Douglas K
DK
D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D002170:Canada; D002300:Cardiac Care Facilities / Q000592:standards; D002309:Cardiology / Q000592:standards*; D016507:Cardiology Service, Hospital / Q000592:standards; D005260:Female; D019538:Health Care Surveys; D006297:Health Services Accessibility; D006801:Humans; D033181:Information Dissemination; D007407:Interviews as Topic; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D010353:Patient Education as Topic / Q000592:standards; D017060:Patient Satisfaction / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D019984:Quality Indicators, Health Care; D015203:Reproducibility of Results