Reporting a regular medical doctor index: A new measure of patient-physician affiliation for health administrative data.

Having a regular medical doctor is associated with better process of care and health outcomes. The goal of this study was to harness the richness in health administrative data to create a measure which accurately predicted whether patients self-identified as having a regular medical doctor. The Cana...

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Main Authors: Caroline King, M Ruth Lavergne, Kimberlyn McGrail, Erin C Strumpf, Quebec-British Columbia Patient Enrolment Project Team
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Public Library of Science (PLoS) 2024-01-01
Series:PLoS ONE
Online Access:https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0314381
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author Caroline King
M Ruth Lavergne
Kimberlyn McGrail
Erin C Strumpf
Quebec-British Columbia Patient Enrolment Project Team
author_facet Caroline King
M Ruth Lavergne
Kimberlyn McGrail
Erin C Strumpf
Quebec-British Columbia Patient Enrolment Project Team
author_sort Caroline King
collection DOAJ
description Having a regular medical doctor is associated with better process of care and health outcomes. The goal of this study was to harness the richness in health administrative data to create a measure which accurately predicted whether patients self-identified as having a regular medical doctor. The Canadian Community Health Survey (2007-2012) was linked with health administrative data (HAD) (2002-2012) from Quebec, Canada's second largest province. The Canadian Community Health Survey includes respondents' answer to whether they have a regular medical doctor, but health administrative data does not. We therefore used LASSO and Random Forests to build prediction models that predict whether a patient reports having a regular medical doctor using their data only available in the HAD. Our results show that predicting patient responses to 'do you have a regular medical doctor?' using an average of single-year Usual Provider Continuity over 3 years results in an area under the receiver operator characteristic curve of 0.782 (0.778-0.787). This was almost a 14% improvement in predictive accuracy compared to the frequently used single-year Usual Provider Continuity (0.688 (0.683-0.694)). We have called this new measure the Reporting a Regular Medical Doctor (RRMD) index. The RRMD index is easy to implement in HAD, is an elegant solution to the difficulties associated with low-users having unstable UPC scores, and brings a patient-oriented perspective to previous efforts to capture patient-physician affiliations in HAD. We recommend that researchers seeking to measure whether patients have a regular medical doctor using HAD consider using the RRMD index.
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spelling doaj-art-e2d30fe2d91b4dfb97c8e5cf88b4ee812024-12-06T05:31:13ZengPublic Library of Science (PLoS)PLoS ONE1932-62032024-01-011912e031438110.1371/journal.pone.0314381Reporting a regular medical doctor index: A new measure of patient-physician affiliation for health administrative data.Caroline KingM Ruth LavergneKimberlyn McGrailErin C StrumpfQuebec-British Columbia Patient Enrolment Project TeamHaving a regular medical doctor is associated with better process of care and health outcomes. The goal of this study was to harness the richness in health administrative data to create a measure which accurately predicted whether patients self-identified as having a regular medical doctor. The Canadian Community Health Survey (2007-2012) was linked with health administrative data (HAD) (2002-2012) from Quebec, Canada's second largest province. The Canadian Community Health Survey includes respondents' answer to whether they have a regular medical doctor, but health administrative data does not. We therefore used LASSO and Random Forests to build prediction models that predict whether a patient reports having a regular medical doctor using their data only available in the HAD. Our results show that predicting patient responses to 'do you have a regular medical doctor?' using an average of single-year Usual Provider Continuity over 3 years results in an area under the receiver operator characteristic curve of 0.782 (0.778-0.787). This was almost a 14% improvement in predictive accuracy compared to the frequently used single-year Usual Provider Continuity (0.688 (0.683-0.694)). We have called this new measure the Reporting a Regular Medical Doctor (RRMD) index. The RRMD index is easy to implement in HAD, is an elegant solution to the difficulties associated with low-users having unstable UPC scores, and brings a patient-oriented perspective to previous efforts to capture patient-physician affiliations in HAD. We recommend that researchers seeking to measure whether patients have a regular medical doctor using HAD consider using the RRMD index.https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0314381
spellingShingle Caroline King
M Ruth Lavergne
Kimberlyn McGrail
Erin C Strumpf
Quebec-British Columbia Patient Enrolment Project Team
Reporting a regular medical doctor index: A new measure of patient-physician affiliation for health administrative data.
PLoS ONE
title Reporting a regular medical doctor index: A new measure of patient-physician affiliation for health administrative data.
title_full Reporting a regular medical doctor index: A new measure of patient-physician affiliation for health administrative data.
title_fullStr Reporting a regular medical doctor index: A new measure of patient-physician affiliation for health administrative data.
title_full_unstemmed Reporting a regular medical doctor index: A new measure of patient-physician affiliation for health administrative data.
title_short Reporting a regular medical doctor index: A new measure of patient-physician affiliation for health administrative data.
title_sort reporting a regular medical doctor index a new measure of patient physician affiliation for health administrative data
url https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0314381
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