A Consumer Health Information System to Assist Patients Select Quality Home Health Services†
by
Dimitrios Zikos * and Nailya DeLellis
Dimitrios Zikos * and Nailya DeLellis
Health Administration Division, Central Michigan University, Mount Pleasant, MI 48859, USA
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
†
This paper is an extended version of our paper published in Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on PErvasive Technologies Related to Assistive Environments (PETRA ‘17), Island of Rhodes, Greece, 21–23 June 2017.
Technologies 2017, 5(4), 76; https://doi.org/10.3390/technologies5040076
Received: 1 November 2017 / Revised: 21 November 2017 / Accepted: 23 November 2017 / Published: 29 November 2017
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Selected Papers from the 10th International Conference on Pervasive Technologies Related to Assistive Environments (PETRA))
Patients evaluate the quality of home health agencies (HHAs) using the Health Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS) survey. This paper describes a prototype community health information system to help patients select appropriate and quality HHAs, according to the location, proprietary status, type of service, and year of HHA establishment. Five HCAHPS indicators were selected: “summary rating”, “quality of care”, “professional care”, “communication”, and “recommend agency”. Independent t-test analysis showed that agencies offering Speech Pathology, Medical-Social, or Home Health Aide services, receive significantly worse HCAHPS ratings, while mean ratings vary significantly across different US states. Multiple comparisons with post hoc ANOVA revealed differences between and within HHAs of different proprietary status (p < 0.001): governmental HHAs receiving higher ratings than private HHAs. Finally, there was observed a relationship between all five quality rating variables and the HHA year of establishment (Pearson, p < 0.001). The older the agency is, the better the HCAPS summary ratings. Findings provided the knowledge to design of a consumer health information system, to provide rankings filtered according to user criteria, comparing the quality rankings of eligible HHAs. Users can also see how a specific agency is ranked against eligible HHAs. Ultimately, the system aims to support the patient community with contextually realistic comparisons in an effort to choose optimal HH service.
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Keywords:
home health care; patient experiences; HCAHPS; consumer health informatics; consumer health information system
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Zikos, D.; DeLellis, N. A Consumer Health Information System to Assist Patients Select Quality Home Health Services. Technologies 2017, 5, 76.
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