Development of a new tool for the assessment of patient-defined benefit in hospitalised older patients: the Patient Benefit Assessment Scale for Hospitalised Older Patients (P-BAS HOP)

OBJECTIVES: To support the shift from disease-oriented towards goal-oriented care, we aimed to develop a tool which is capable both to identify priorities of an individual older hospitalised patient and to measure the outcomes relevant to him. DESIGN: Mixed-methods design with open interviews, three step test interviews (TSTIs) and a quantitative field test. SETTING: University teaching hospital and a regional teaching hospital. PARTICIPANTS: Hospitalised patients ages 70 years and older. RESULTS: The Patient Benefit Assessment Scale for Hospitalised Older Patients (P-BAS HOP) consists of a baseline questionnaire and an evaluation questionnaire. Items were based on 15 qualitative interviews with hospitalised older patients. Feedback from a panel of four community-dwelling older persons resulted in some adaptations to wording and one additional item. Twenty-six hospitalised older patients participated in TSTIs with Version 1 of the baseline questionnaire, revealing indications for a good content validity and barriers in completion behaviour, global understanding and understanding of individual items, which were solved with several adaptations. Four additions were made by participants. After TSTIs with ten patients with the evaluation questionnaire, one adaptation was made. A field test with 91 hospitalised older patients revealed a small number of missing values. To enhance the feasibility, the number of items was reduced from 32 to 22, based on correlations and mean impact score. The field test was repeated with 104 other patients in a regional teaching hospital. To enhance the understanding, the tool was split into two phases. This version was tested with TSTIs with eight patients and appeared to be understandable. The final version was an interview-based tool and took about 11 min to complete. CONCLUSIONS: The P-BAS HOP is a potentially suitable tool to identify priorities and relevant outcomes of the individual patient. Further research is needed to investigate its validity, reliability and responsiveness.