How often are hospitalized patients and providers on the same page with regard to the patient's primary recovery goal for hospitalization?

BACKGROUND: To deliver high-quality, patient-centered care during hospitalization, healthcare providers must correctly identify the patient's primary recovery goal. OBJECTIVE: To determine the degree of concordance between patients and key hospital providers. DESIGN: A validated questionnaire administered to a random sample of hospitalized patients alongside their nurse and physician provider. Goals included: "be cured," "live longer," "improve/maintain health," "be comfortable," "accomplish a particular life goal," or "other." SETTING: Major academic hospital in Boston, Massachusetts. PARTICIPANTS: Adult patients admitted for more than 48 hours from November 2013 to May 2014 were eligible. When a patient was incapacitated, a legal proxy was interviewed. The nurse and physician provider were then interviewed within 24 hours. MEASUREMENTS: Frequencies of responses for each recovery goal and the rate of concordance among the patient, nurse, and physician provider were measured. The frequency of responses across groups were compared using adjusted chi(2) analyses. Inter-rater agreement was measured using 2-way Kappa tests. RESULTS: All 3 participants were interviewed in 109 of the 181 (60.2%) patients approached (or with proxy available). Significant differences in selected goals were observed across respondent groups (P < 0.001). Patients frequently chose "be cured" (46.8%). Nurses and physician providers frequently selected "improve or maintain health" (38.5% and 46.8%, respectively). All 3 participants selected the same goal in 22 cases (20.2%). Interrater agreement was poor to slight for all pairs (kappa 0.09 [20.03-0.19], 0.19 [0.08-0.30], and 0.20 [0.08-0.32] for patient-physician, patient-nurse, and nurse-physician, respectively). CONCLUSIONS: We observed poor to slight concordance among hospitalized patients and key medical team members with regard to the patient's primary recovery goal. (C) 2016 Society of Hospital Medicine