A scoping review of shared care models for rheumatoid arthritis with patient-initiated follow-up

Objective: An emerging strategy to address access challenges to rheumatologists for patients with RA is shared care between primary and specialist care, with patient-initiated rheumatologist follow-up as needed. The objective of this scoping review was to explore studies implementing this model of care.

Methods: Four electronic databases were searched from 01/01/2000-31/03/2022 using three main concepts (RA, shared care, patient-initiated follow-up). English-language studies of any design were included if they described the implementation and/or outcomes of shared care model for RA with patient-initiated follow-up. Two authors reviewed and selected articles in duplicate and extracted data on study characteristics, care model implementation and outcomes according to a pre-specified protocol.

Results: Following duplicate removal, 1578 articles were screened for inclusion and 58 underwent full-text review. Sixteen articles were included, representing 10 unique studies. Five studies had qualitative outcomes and two were pre-implementation studies. Model implementation varied significantly between studies. Effectiveness data was available in 10 studies and demonstrated equivalent outcomes for the model of care (disease activity, radiographic damage, quality of life). Health system costs were equivalent or lower than usual care. While satisfaction with care was equivalent or improved in shared care models with patient-initiated follow-up, some concerns were expressed in qualitative evaluation around appropriate patient selection for such models, and information for health equity evaluation was not reported.

Conclusions: While shared care models with patient-initiated follow-up may offer comparable outcomes for RA, further work is required to understand patient preferences, health equity considerations and longer-term outcomes for such models of care.