Senior Citizens that Bring Companions to Medical
Visits are More Satisfied with Care
Companions are a valuable quality of care resource
that could enhance the experience for millions of vulnerable Americans
July
14, 2008 – Almost two out of every five Medicare patients age 65 or
older appear for their medical visits accompanied by family members or
companions, which seems to contribute to a greater satisfaction with
their doctor and about everything else associated with the visit. The
report in today’s Archives of Internal Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives
journals, says this is especially true among those in poor health.
Families are increasingly understood to be
important to patient care, according to background information in the
article. However, little is known about which specific attributes of
their involvement are most helpful to patients or result in the greatest
improvements in quality of care.
Jennifer L. Wolff, Ph.D., and Debra L. Roter, Dr.
P.H., M.P.H., of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health,
Baltimore, and colleagues studied a sample of 12,018 Medicare
beneficiaries 65 years or older who participated in a 2004 survey. These
older adults were representative of approximately 30 million Medicare
beneficiaries living in the community.
The researchers found that:
● 38.6 percent of participants reported
regularly being accompanied to medical visits
● Companions included spouses (53.3 percent);
adult children (31.9 percent); other relatives (6.8 percent); roommates,
friends or neighbors (5.2 percent); non-relatives (2.8 percent); or
nurses, nurse aides or legal or financial officers (less than 1 percent)
● 63.8 percent of companions helped with
communication, including 44.1 percent who recorded physician comments
and instructions, 41.5 percent who communicated information about the
patient’s medical condition to the physician, 41 percent who asked
questions, 29.7 percent who explained physician’s instructions and 3.3
percent who translated the English language
● 28.4 percent of companions were reported to be
present for company and moral support, 52.3 percent to assist with
transportation, 16.6 percent to help schedule appointments and 8.4
percent to provide physical assistance
Beneficiaries with regular companions were more
highly satisfied with their physician’s technical skills,
information-giving and interpersonal skills.
Those whose companions more actively helped with
communication rated their physicians’ information-giving and
interpersonal skills more favorably.
This relationship was stronger among patients who
reported themselves to be in worse health.
“Findings establish that visit companions, most
often spouses and adult children, are commonly present in older adults’
routine medical encounters, actively engaged in the exchange of health
information between patients and their physicians and influential in
patients’ perceptions of physician interpersonal rapport and information
giving,” the authors write.
“Moreover, visit companions tend to accompany
patients who are especially vulnerable; in this study, accompanied
patients were older, less educated and in worse health than their
unaccompanied counterparts.”
“Results presented in this article suggest that
patients’ visit companions, hidden, but in plain sight, are a valuable
quality of care resource whose efforts, if further optimized, could
enhance the experience of care for millions of vulnerable Americans,”
they conclude.
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July
14, 2008 – Almost two out of every five Medicare patients age 65 or
older appear for their medical visits accompanied by family members or
companions, which seems to contribute to a greater satisfaction with
their doctor and about everything else associated with the visit. The
report in today’s Archives of Internal Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives
journals, says this is especially true among those in poor health.