Effects of Intensive Primary Care on High-Need Patient Experiences: Survey Findings from a Veterans Affairs Randomized Quality Improvement Trial

Background: Intensive primary care programs aim to coordinate care for patients with medical, behavioral, and social complexity, but little is known about their impact on patient experience when implemented in a medical home.

Objective: Determine how augmenting the VA's medical home (Patient Aligned Care Team, PACT) with a PACT-Intensive Management (PIM) program influences patient experiences with care coordination, access, provider relationships, and satisfaction.

Design: Cross-sectional analysis of patient survey data from a five-site randomized quality improvement study.

Participants: Two thousand five hundred sixty-six Veterans with hospitalization risk scores ≥ 90th percentile and recent acute care.

Intervention: PIM offered patients intensive care coordination, including home visits, accompaniment to specialists, acute care follow-up, and case management from a team staffed by primary care providers, social workers, psychologists, nurses, and/or other support staff.

Main measures: Patient-reported experiences with care coordination (e.g., health goal assessment, test and appointment follow-up, Patient Assessment of Chronic Illness Care (PACIC)), access to healthcare services, provider relationships, and satisfaction.

Key results: Seven hundred fifty-nine PIM and 768 PACT patients responded to the survey (response rate 60%). Patients randomized to PIM were more likely than those in PACT to report that they were asked about their health goals (AOR = 1.26; P = 0.046) and that they have a VA provider whom they trust (AOR = 1.35; P = 0.005). PIM patients also had higher mean (SD) PACIC scores compared with PACT patients (2.91 (1.31) vs. 2.75 (1.25), respectively; P = 0.022) and were more likely to report 10 out of 10 on satisfaction with primary care (AOR = 1.25; P = 0.048). However, other effects on coordination, access, and satisfaction did not achieve statistical significance.

Conclusions: Augmenting VA's patient-centered medical home with intensive primary care had a modestly positive influence on high-risk patients' experiences with care coordination and provider relationships, but did not have a significant impact on most patient-reported access and satisfaction measures.