Assessing the agreement between the partners at care transitions measure and the care transitions measure for elderly patients with chronic diseases

BACKGROUND: Elderly patients with chronic diseases are very vulnerable during the transition from hospital to home and have a high need for transitional care. The quality of transitional care is closely related to patient health outcomes. Using appropriate scales to evaluate the quality of transitional care is important for efforts aimed at improving it. The study aimed to analyze the consistency between the Chinese version of the Partners at Care Transitions Measure (PACT-M) and the Care Transition Measure (CTM) in assessing the quality of transition care in elderly patients with chronic diseases. METHODS: This is a cross-sectional study, we used a convenience sampling method to investigate patients with chronic diseases aged ≧ 65 years who were about to be discharged from the three affiliated hospitals of Zhengzhou University in Henan Province, from August 2021 to May 2022. The sample consisted of 196 elderly patients with chronic diseases. Data were collected using a demographic survey, PACT-M, and CTM. We used EpiData 3.1 software for systematic logical error checking, SPSS 21.0 to analyze the data, and the Bland–Altman analysis to analyze the consistency of the two scales. RESULTS: The mean total scores for PACT-M and CTM were 65.52 ± 6.23 and 52.07 ± 7.26, respectively. The 95% confidence interval (CI) for the mean difference and ratios were (-31.52, 4.61) and (0.85, 1.72), with 3.57% and 5.10% of the points outside the 95% CI limits, separately. CONCLUSIONS: The difference analysis of Bland–Altman showed a good consistency of the two scales, while the rate analysis did not meet the a priori definition of good consistency, but it is very close to 5%. Therefore, the consistency of the two scales in assessing the quality of transitional care for elderly patients with chronic diseases needs to be further validated.