Health care education, delivery, and qualityImproved asthma outcomes from allergy specialist care: A population-based cross-sectional analysis
Section snippets
Patients
Surveys were sent as part of a quality assessment and improvement project by the Kaiser Permanente Care Management Institute in August 2000 to a random sample (using medical record numbers) of Kaiser Permanente Medical Care Program adult members aged 18 to 56 years from the Northern California (n = 3072), Northwest (n = 543), and Southern California (n = 3251) regions (Fig 1) who were given diagnoses of persistent asthma on the basis of the presence of one or more of the following National
Results
Of the 3765 patients who completed the survey, 3568 answered the question regarding their regular source of asthma care. Of these patients, 1679 (47.1%) identified a primary care physician, 884 (24.8%) identified an allergist, 195 (5.5%) identified a pulmonologist, 118 (3.3%) identified an asthma care manager, and 692 (19.4%) reported they had no regular asthma care provider. Because such a small number of patients identified a care manager and because care managers do not function autonomously
Discussion
Asthma is an extremely common medical illness that causes substantial morbidity, including hospitalizations, emergency department visits, and reduced quality of life.20 It is therefore important to identify processes of care that reduce such morbidity. This study demonstrates that patients of allergists experience fewer hospitalizations and unscheduled visits, less need for rescue therapy, higher asthma-specific quality of life, less symptoms, more asthma control, and increased satisfaction
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Cited by (0)
Supported by Kaiser Permanente Care Management Institute.
Disclosure of potential conflict of interest: R. Zeiger has consultant arrangements with Novartis, Genentech, GlaxoSmithKline, and Aventis and has received grants from GlaxoSmithKline and Aventis. All other authors—none disclosed.