Assessing the Burden of Treatment
Gabriela Spencer-Bonilla, Ana R Quiñones, Victor M Montori, International Minimally Disruptive Medicine Workgroup, Gabriela Spencer-Bonilla, Ana R Quiñones, Victor M Montori, International Minimally Disruptive Medicine Workgroup
Abstract
Current healthcare systems and guidelines are not designed to adapt to care for the large and growing number of patients with complex care needs and those with multimorbidity. Minimally disruptive medicine (MDM) is an approach to providing care for complex patients that advances patients' goals in health and life while minimizing the burden of treatment. Measures of treatment burden assess the impact of healthcare workload on patient function and well-being. At least two of these measures are now available for use with patients living with chronic conditions. Here, we describe these measures and how they can be useful for clinicians, researchers, managers, and policymakers. Their work to improve the care of high-cost, high-use, complex patients using innovative patient-centered models such as MDM should be supported by periodic large-scale assessments of treatment burden.
Keywords: chronic disease; minimally disruptive medicine; multimorbidity; quality measures; treatment burden.
Conflict of interest statement
FundingGSB and VMM were supported by CTSA grant numbers TL1 TR000137 and UL1 TR000135, respectively, from the National Center for Advancing Translational Science (NCATS), a component of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). ARQ is supported by an American Diabetes Association career development award (ADA 7–13-CD-08). The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the NIH.
Conflict of InterestThe authors declare that they do not have a conflict of interest.
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Source: PubMed