Evaluating Patient and Physician Cost Knowledge in the Emergency Department

Do Providers and Consumers Know the Cost of Common Tests and Procedures Delivered in the Emergency Department?

Status

Completed

Phases

Unknown

Study type

Observational

Source

ClinicalTrials.gov

Registry ID

NCT01883778

Enrollment

512

Registered

2013-06-21

Start date

2012-08-31

Completion date

2013-08-31

Last updated

2016-12-26

For informational purposes only — not medical advice. Sourced from public registries and may not reflect the latest updates. Terms

Conditions

Economic Problems

Keywords

Attitudes of health personnel, Attitudes of patients, Medical compliance, Cost awareness, Cost analysis, Patient knowledge, Physician knowledge, Medical economics, Policy, Questionnaires, Health literacy

Brief summary

The purpose of this study is to identify existing cost knowledge of Emergency Medicine (EM) physicians and patients and investigates its reported impacts on medical compliance. A cross-sectional survey will be administered electronically to Emergency Medicine physicians at the University of Utah Hospital and the Emergency Physician Integrated Care, LLC (EPIC) who staff ten-community hospital Emergency Departments (ED) in order to investigate physician knowledge and attitudes regarding cost and perceived patient compliance. In addition, a cross-sectional survey will be administered to a convenience sample of patients presenting to the University of Utah Emergency Department to obtain information about their cost knowledge and reported compliance. All ED patients will complete a follow-up phone survey to measure compliance with recommendations made during the ED visits. Following administration of the baseline survey physicians will be provided the prices of the test and procedures and will be re-surveyed 30-days later as a post intervention test to measure changes in knowledge and attitudes.

Interventions

None listed

Study design

Observational model

COHORT

Time perspective

CROSS_SECTIONAL

Eligibility

Sex/Gender

ALL

Age

18 Years to No maximum

Healthy volunteers

Yes

Inclusion criteria

Patient Population: * 18 years old or older * Deemed psychologically and medically stable by the ED care provide * Speak English

Exclusion criteria

Patient Population: * Prisoner * Brought to Emergency Department by Emergency Medical Service Inclusion Criteria Physician Population: * Employed in target medical practices

Design outcomes

Primary

Measure	Time frame	Description
Proportion of emergency medicine physician with accurate (+/- 25% of actual cost) cost knowledge of common medical services; influence on testing and prescribing patterns.	1 year	Measure the extent of formal education regarding cost of medical services that physicians in the survey population have received and how that impacts knowledge and accuracy; perceived impact on medical compliance among patients.

Secondary

Measure	Time frame	Description
Proportion of emergency department patients with accurate (+/- 25% actual costs) knowledge of medical service cost; correlation between health literacy and cost knowledge accuracy in patients.	1 year	Measure patient health literacy using the REALM-SF (AHRQ) and determine any correlation with cost estimation accuracy and reported impact on medical compliance among patients.

Other

Measure	Time frame	Description
Efficacy of intervention to improving accuracy in cost estimation in emergency physicians.	1 year	Changes in self-reported cost knowledge competency and cost estimation accuracy using the intervention comparing the baseline report at time of enrollment to 30 days post intervention.

Countries

United States

Outcome results