Disseminating information using an anesthesiology consultant report: Impact on patient perceptions of quality of care

Study Objective: To determine if providing an Anesthesiology Consultant Report (ACR) to patients would result in enhanced patients' perceptions of their knowledge about their care and improve their perception of the quality of their care.Design: Randomized, unblinded study.Setting: Outpatient center associated with tertiary care center.Patients: 371 outpatients without adverse anesthetic events.Interventions: Patients were randomized to receive either routine discharge instructions or routine instructions and an anesthesia discharge summary (ACR).Measurements and Main Results: Short questionnaire with discharge packet regarding knowledge of anesthetic and questions regarding satisfaction and perceptions of quality of care was distributed. The patients in the group that received an ACR were more satisfied with the management of their pain and other symptoms (p < 0.05, by Wilcoxon rank sums) and were more satisfied overall with the quality of the anesthesia care (p < 0.01, by Wilcoxon rank sums). Taken another way, significantly more patients deemed the quality of their anesthetic care as excellent in the ACR group compared to control (83% vs. 67%, p < 0.01).Conclusions: Providing patients, with uneventful anesthetic courses, with information regarding their anesthetic care, in the form of the ACR, results in improved perceptions of the quality of care. Copyright (C) 1999 Elsevier Science Inc.