Press Releases: Southern California
March 30, 2005
Kaiser Permanente Study Shows Who Is Likely to Have an Asthma Attack and Go to the ER
PASADENA, Calif. – A Kaiser Permanente study has shown that patient assessments utilizing questionnaire-based survey tools can be used to predict which of those patients are most likely to experience an asthma attack and go to an emergency room or hospital for treatment.
"The questionnaires added predictive information above and beyond other already established risk factors," said Michael Schatz, MD, MS, and Chief of the Department of Allergy at Kaiser Permanente San Diego Medical Center. "The ultimate purpose of such risk stratification is to identify patients for whom intervention might prevent reoccurrence."
The study, which was published in the March edition of The Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, evaluated four types of scientifically sound psychometric (research into and measurement of human characteristics) tools as predictors for subsequent asthma utilization and determined their clinical usefulness.
Information on eleven hundred HMO patients with active asthma was used to perform the study. The completed surveys included demographic information as well as the validated psychometric tools.
"Our questionnaires were validated, meaning that they are scientifically sound and were intended to reflect quality of life, asthma control, or intensity of the symptoms," said Schatz. "We found those questionnaires also helped us to predict who is at risk of ending up in the emergency room or the hospital."
"We are also very interested in finding ways to intervene and prevent those occurrences," said Schatz.
Survey records were linked to administrative data including emergency department and hospital care, short-acting beta-agonists, and oral corticosteroids for the year of and the year following the survey. In this way, it can be shown that the tools predicted subsequent utilization, above and beyond what their baseline utilization would predict.
"The three asthma related tools we studied provided fairly similar information when it came to predictability, so we probably don't need all three of the tools, any one will provide adequate information," said Schatz.
The study's other authors are Robert S. Zeiger, MD, PhD, of the Department of Allergy, Kaiser Permanente San Diego Medical Center; David Mosen, PhD, Thomas B. Stibolt, MD, and Michael S. Johnson, MS, all of the Care Management Institute, Kaiser Permanente Medical Care Program; Andrea J. Apter, MD, MSc, Division of Allergy-Immunology, Department of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine, University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine; William M. Vollmer, PhD, Center for Health Research; Albin Leong, MD, Sacramento; Guillermo Mendoza, MD, Vacaville; and E. Francis Cook, ScD, Department of Epidemiology, Harvard School of Public Health.
About Kaiser Permanente
Kaiser Permanente is America's leading integrated health plan. Founded in 1945, it is a nonprofit, group practice prepayment program with Southern California headquarters in Pasadena, California. Kaiser Permanente serves the health care needs of 3.3 million members in Southern California. Today it encompasses the nonprofit Kaiser Foundation Health Plan, Inc., Kaiser Foundation Hospitals and their subsidiaries, and the for-profit Southern California Permanente Medical Group. Kaiser Permanente's Southern California Region includes more than 49,900 technical, administrative and clerical employees and caregivers, and more than 6,000 physicians representing all specialties. More information about Kaiser Permanente can be found at kaiserpermanente.org.
