Predicting Utilization in a Community Health Center: Patient Activation Measure vs Single Item General-Self Rated Health Measure Pilot

Abstract

Background: Physicians need tools to rapidly and accurately identify high resource use patients to target for interventions to reduce healthcare utilization. Both Patient Activation Measure (PAM) and the single item general self-rated health measure (SF-1) are validated, self-administered tools that predict several important outcomes in the office setting.Objective: We examined whether PAM versus the SF-1 predicted healthcare utilization in a cross sectional pilot evaluation of an urban family medicine residency/community health center population in Madison, Wisconsin. Methods:Between June and July 2013, patients completed a survey including demographic information, PAM, and SF-1 measures.Number of office visits, emergency and urgent care visits, hospital days, phone calls, and refills for the past 12 months were extracted from the medical record. Results:Complete information was obtained on 99/104 patients. PAM was not a significant predictor of health care utilization.Lower scores on the SF-1 were significantly associated with increased hospital days (P<.05), phone calls (P<.001), and refills (P<.01). Conclusion:In our pilot study, the PAM does not predict healthcare utilization; the SF-1 measure was strongly correlated with several measures of healthcare utilization.Predicting utilization with PAM vs. SF-1