Patient-Provider Communication and Medication Adherence

High blood pressure contributes to the racial disparities in death rates between minority patients and whites. Understanding the factors underlying racial disparities in high blood pressure-related outcomes is a major focus of Healthy People 2010. Several factors including access to care, patient preferences and lower socioeconomic status have been used to explain the differences seen in timely and effective delivery of preventive care between minority patients and whites. However, when these factors are controlled for, health disparities still exist. Recently, the Institute of Medicine identified interpersonal processes within the patient-provider relationship as a potential reason for the health disparities between minority and white patients. Specifically, providers' communication, including the ability to listen, collaborate, and be empathetic during the medical encounter has emerged as an important dimension of care that differs by race. Despite the increasing evidence that racial differences in patient-provider communication affects patient care, many of these studies have examined issues related to processes of care such as patient satisfaction with little attention to intermediate outcomes such as medication adherence. Further, studies that have used audio-taped analysis to examine racial differences in patient-provider communication are limited by one-dimensional coding systems that lack the ability to capture the mutual influence the patient and provider have on one another during the interaction. Thus, the potential pathways through which patient-provider communication contribute to high blood pressure-related disparities in minority patients compared to whites is not clearly understood. This proposed two-phase, mixed-methods research study, provides a unique opportunity to address these gaps by clarifying the effect of patient's race on patient-provider communication and medication adherence among 120 hypertensive African American and white patients receiving care in primary care practices. Specifically, findings from a qualitative analysis of patient-provider communication (Phase 1) will inform the development of a conceptual model that will be used to quantitatively evaluate the relationship between patient's race, patient-provider communication and medication adherence (Phase 2).