Setting
This study was conducted in the primary care clinic of a large urban hospital. The clinic serves as the site for ambulatory care training for a large internal medicine residency with about 150 residents. Trainees provide primary care to the patients and have a continuous relationship with them over their three years of training. The clinic provides a broad range of services for patient care, including social work, pharmacy, nutrition, and foot care. Residents are supervised by faculty physicians appointed by Washington University in St. Louis. In one year, the Primary Care Clinic in the Center for Outpatient Health (COH) at Barnes-Jewish Hospital saw 16,907 unique patients; 64% African American, 30% white, and 6% other. The majority of patients are female (67%), between 35-64 years of age (59%), and live in St. Louis City (46%) or St. Louis County (31%). About 40% of patients are covered by Medicare; 40% by Medicaid; and 3% are uninsured.
Data collection
Participants in this study were recruited between July 2013 and April 2014. Patients in the waiting rooms of the COH were approached by trained data collectors and asked to complete a survey in English. Surveys were administered on different days of the week and at different times of day; data collectors approached all patients in the waiting room during their shifts. Inclusion criteria were that participants be at least 18 years old, a patient at the COH, and speak English. Participants were asked to complete a self-administered written questionnaire and a verbally administered survey component. The latter component assessed health literacy and was administered by a trained data collector who recorded responses. All participants completed a verbal consent process and signed a written consent form before completing the survey. As part of the consent process, participants could opt-in to have information abstracted from their medical records and merged with survey data. This study was approved by the Human Research Protection Office at Washington University School of Medicine. Secondary data analysis was approved by the NYU IRB.
Codebook
Data Request
Request the data by completing a data request form (must download) and this COH Data Request survey (Upload the data request form to the survey). They are reviewed monthly by the project PIs Drs. Kaphingst and Goodman. All request are subject to IRB approval