Impact of a patient-specific co-designed COPD care scorecard on COPD care quality: a quasi-experimental study

BACKGROUND: The evidence that sharing mass care quality data with health service users improves care is weak. AIMS: We hypothesised that providing patients with individualised care quality data would drive improvements to the care received by those patients. METHODS: Together with patients who had chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), we co-designed a quality score card mapping indicators derived from National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE) quality standards against matched data taken from their general practice clinical records. All 640 COPD patients from 10 practices had improvements in these indicators before and 3 months after the intervention compared with 595 COPD patients in 10 control practices. RESULTS: Significant improvements in referral to pulmonary rehabilitation (P=0.03) and confirmation of diagnosis with spirometry (P=0.001) were seen in the intervention compared with the control practice population (P<0.001). Increases in the provision of self-management plans were seen in both the groups. No improvement was seen in other indicators. CONCLUSIONS: Although the study is not able to prove a direct cause and effect, there is sufficient evidence presented to warrant the larger-scale evaluation of co-designed, personalised, quality score cards for COPD patients used as a tool to enhance care quality.