Relevant patient characteristics for estimating healthcare needs according to healthcare providers and people with type 2 diabetes: a Delphi survey

BACKGROUND: Recently, there has been growing interest in providing more tailored, patient-centered care for the treatment of type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM). Yet it remains unclear which patient characteristics should be determined to guide such an approach. Therefore, the opinions of healthcare providers (HCP) and people with T2DM about relevant patient characteristics for estimating healthcare needs of people with T2DM were assessed and compared. METHODS: Two separate online Delphi studies were conducted according to the RAND-UCLA Appropriateness Method: one with HCPs (n = 22) from Dutch primary and secondary care and one with people with T2DM treated in Dutch primary care (n = 46). The relevance of patient characteristics for estimating healthcare needs, defined as the number of yearly consultations, was assessed on a 5-point Likert scale. Characteristics with a median of 4 or 5 and an interquartile range ≤ 1.5 were considered relevant with consensus. Participants were also asked to select the top 5 of most relevant patient characteristics. To determine the overall top 5, the mean relative importance score of each characteristic was calculated. RESULTS: In two Delphi rounds, 28 and 15 patient characteristics were rated by HCPs and people with T2DM, respectively. Both HCPs and people with T2DM found health-related characteristics relevant for estimating healthcare needs of people with T2DM. However, HCPs preferred to estimate healthcare needs using person- and context-related characteristics. They ranked self-efficacy as the most relevant estimator. In contrast, people with T2DM were more in favor of health-related characteristics and ranked HbA1c as the most relevant estimator. CONCLUSIONS: The findings show that there is discrepancy in opinions on relevant patient characteristics for estimating healthcare needs between HCPs and people with T2DM. To achieve more tailored, patient-centered care, it is important that both groups agree on the topics to be discussed during patient consultations. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (10.1186/s12913-019-4371-z) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.