New professional roles and patient satisfaction: Evidence from a European survey along three clinical pathways.

This paper reports the results of an empirical analysis exploring the impact of new professions (eg a physician associate) and new professional roles on patient experiences of and satisfaction with care. A sub set of data from a patient survey conducted as part of the MUNROS programme of work was used. The overall survey aim was to describe and quantify the use of new professionals and new roles for established health care professionals other than medical doctors, in primary and secondary care sectors in three care pathways in nine European countries Ordered logit models were used to investigate the association between: (1) patient satisfaction with the last visit; (2) with their care provider; (3) with the information provided and a set of covariates explaining the involvement of new professional roles in three clinical pathways: type 2 diabetes, heart disease and breast cancer. For patients with breast cancer, high levels of satisfaction are associated with the involvement of new professions/professional roles in the provision of conditions specific education and monitoring. For patients with heart disease, the involvement of new professions/professional roles is likely to have a negative impact on satisfaction. For patients with Type 2 diabetes results are ambivalent. Patients belonging to countries experiencing innovative models of healthcare delivery and with high levels of involvement of new professions/professional roles are generally more satisfied. In conclusion, the introduction of new professions does not affect patient satisfaction negatively, therefore introducing new health professional roles is a pursuable strategy from a patient satisfaction perspective, at least for breast cancer and type 2 diabetes.

Interdependency between social care and hospital care: the case of hospital length of stay.

BACKGROUND: Poor co-ordination and collaboration have been identified by many governments as a major and growing weakness of their health care systems. Better integrated care for the elderly individuals is one field of particular importance. In this study, we ask to what extent local authorities' social care services create cost externalities by prolonging hospital length of stay (LOS) because of inadequate service capacity and/or service quality. METHODS: The data set is constructed by merging in-patient data from the Norwegian Patient Register with Statistics Norway's local authority variables for the period from 2007 to 2009. The sample includes ∼386 000 observations of in-patients aged ≥ 67 years. Using the quantile regression (QR) technique, we analyse the impact of social care services along the entire distribution of LOS. The QR estimates are compared with ordinary least square estimates (OLS). Patient variables in the analyses include age, gender and case-mix variables. Hospital and time-fixed effects are also controlled for variables. RESULTS: More resources to the social care services give shorter LOS, and the QR analysis shows that resources matter more for patients in the long tail of the distribution compared with those in the lower quantiles. LOS is longer for patients with change of residence after discharge from hospital compared with those patients that do not change residence. CONCLUSIONS: Increased supply of social care services contributes to a reduction in aggregate societal costs of treatment and nursing of elderly patients by shortening comparatively costly hospital LOS.