Measuring patients' experiences of continuity of care in a primary care context—Development and evaluation of a patient-reported experience measure

Abstract

Background: Continuity of care is viewed as a hallmark of high-quality care in the primary care context. Measures to evaluate the quality of provider performance are scarce, and it is unclear how the assessments correlate with patients' experiences of care as coherent and interconnected over time, consistent with their preferences and care needs. Aim: To develop and evaluate a patient-reported experience measure of continuity of care in primary care for patients with complex care needs. Method: The study was conducted in two stages: (1) development of the instrument based on theory and empirical studies and reviewed for content validity (16 patients with complex care needs and 8 experts) and (2) psychometric evaluation regarding factor structure, test–retest reliability, internal consistency reliability, and convergent validity. In all, 324 patients participated in the psychometric evaluation. Results: The Patient Experienced Continuity of care Questionnaire (PECQ) contains 20 items clustered in four dimensions of continuity of care measuring Information (four items), Relation (six items), Management (five items), and Knowledge (five items). Overall, the hypothesized factor structure was indicated. The PECQ also showed satisfactory convergent validity, internal consistency, and stability. Conclusion/Implications: The PECQ is a multidimensional patient experience instrument that can provide information on various dimensions useful for driving quality improvement strategies in the primary care context for patients with complex care needs. Patient or Public Contribution: Patients have participated in the content validation of the items.