Does Shared Decision-Making Improve Adherence in Asthma

BACKGROUND: Asthma is a chronic inflammatory disorder of the airways. Despite major advances in understanding of its pathophysiology and management, asthma outcomes have not shown parallel improvement. Many patients with asthma are poorly controlled and have sub-optimal health status. Asthma care management by a trained non-physician health professional has developed as a means of addressing the problems of patients evidencing poor control and/or poor adherence to controller medications. Shared decision making (SDM) between clinician and patient has also been proposed as a means of getting greater patient involvement in their care, with the idea that this may improve medication adherence and outcomes. However, significant patient involvement also might result in less adequate regimens than would management based on guidelines (MBG). Even so, increased adherence to a less adequate regimen might result in better outcomes than poor adherence to an optimal regimen. DESIGN NARRATIVE: Better Outcomes of Asthma Treatment (BOAT) is a randomized controlled trial (a collaborative study designed to compare the effectiveness of three strategies for managing patients, 18-70 years of age, with suboptimally controlled, persistent asthma. The three treatment strategies are: usual care (UC); management by guidelines (MG); and a third, shared decision making (SDM) arm, that seeks to formally involve the patient in the therapeutic decision-making process. Under the present grant, 302 study participants were recruited from the membership of the Kaiser Permanente - Northern California Region (KPNC), San Francisco, Oakland, and Richmond medical centers. In the collaborating grant (No.HL67092-03) 311 patients were recruited from Kaiser Permanente clinical facilities in Portland, OR, and Honolulu, HI. Patients were randomized equally to the three treatment arms following baseline assessment of asthma control, medication use, lung function, and other behavioral and psychological characteristics. Their health care utilization for asthma and acquisition of asthma medications is being followed for a total of 24 months post-randomization through health system records, and they are being reassessed at 12 mos. Those assigned to the care management conditions received asthma education and objective feedback on their level of asthma control. Those assigned to the MBG condition were prescribed a regimen appropriate to the severity of their asthma in accordance with standard guidelines for asthma management. Those assigned to the SDM condition participated in a process to elicit their goals for their asthma treatment and their priorities regarding their asthma medications, and then engaged in a process of shared decision making with the care manager designed to arrive at a prescribed regimen that satisfied their goals and preferences. Analysis of the data will compare the two care management approaches with usual care and with each other in terms of the primary outcomes.