Follow-Up Shadow Coaching Improves Primary Care Provider-Patient Interactions and Maintains Improvements When Conducted Regularly: A Spline Model Analysis

• Published in: Journal of general internal medicine : JGIM Vol. 38; no. 1; pp. 221 - 227
• Main Authors: Quigley, Denise D., Elliott, Marc N., Slaughter, Mary E., Talamantes, Efrain, Hays, Ron D.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Cham Springer International Publishing 01.01.2023; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Coaching; Communication; Follow-Up Studies; Health care; Humans; Innovations in Clinical Practice; Internal Medicine; Medicine; Medicine & Public Health; Mentoring; Primary care; Primary Health Care; Regression analysis; Regression models; Shadows; Statistical analysis; spline models; coaching; CAHPS; provider performance; patient experience
• DOI: 10.1007/s11606-022-07881-y
• ISSN: 0884-8734

Introduction Shadow coaching improves provider-patient interactions, as measured by CG-CAHPS® overall provider rating (OPR) and provider communication (PC). However, these improvements erode over time. Aim Examine whether a second coaching session (re-coaching) improves and sustains patient experience. Setting Large, urban Federally Qualified Health Center Program Trained providers observed patient care by colleagues and provided suggestions for improvement. Providers with OPRs<90 (0–100-point scale) were eligible. Evaluation We used stratified randomization based on provider type and OPR to assign half of the 40 eligible providers to re-coaching. For OPR and PC, we fit mixed-effects regression models with random-effects for provider (level of treatment assignment) and fixed-effects for time (linear spline with knots and possible “jump” at initial coaching and re-coaching), previous OPR, patient characteristics, and sites. We observed a statistically significant medium jump among re-coached providers after re-coaching on OPR (3.7 points) and PC (3.5 points); differences of 1, 3, and ≥5-points for CAHPS measures are considered small, medium, and large. Improvements from re-coaching persisted for 12 months for OPR and 8 months for PC. Discussion Re-coaching improved patient experience more than initial coaching, suggesting the reactivation of knowledge from initial coaching. However, re-coaching gains also eroded. Coaching should occur every 6 to 12 months to maintain behaviors and scores.