483 Personalised care planning beneficial for adults with chronic or long-term health conditions

August 23, 2016

written by Brian R McAvoy.

Clinical Question
Compared to usual care, how effective is personalised care planning for adults with chronic or long-term health conditions?

Bottom Line
Personalised care planning led to improvements in certain indicators of physical and psychological health status and people's ability to self-manage their condition, when compared to usual care. Conditions included diabetes, mental health disorders, cardiac failure, end-stage renal disease and asthma. Evidence of impact on condition-specific health status, medication adherence, exercise frequency, resource use and cost-effectiveness was mixed. There was no evidence of effects on diastolic blood pressure, cholesterol, body mass index, generic health status, or diet. The effects were not large but appeared to be greater when the intervention was more comprehensive, intensive and well-integrated into routine care. Evidence on the relative cost-effectiveness of this approach was limited and uncertain.

Caveat
There was some concern about risk of bias for each of the included studies in respect of one or more criteria, usually due to inadequate or unclear descriptions of research methods.

Context
Personalised care planning is a collaborative process used in chronic condition management in which patients and clinicians identify and discuss problems caused by or related to the patient's condition, and develop a plan for tackling these. In essence, it is a conversation, or series of conversations, in which the patient and clinician jointly agree goals and actions for managing the patient's condition.

Cochrane Systematic Review
Coulter A et al. Personalised care planning for adults with chronic or long-term health conditions. Cochrane Reviews, 2015, Issue 3. Art. No.: CD010523.DOI: 10.1002/14651858. CD010523.pub2. This review contains 19 studies involving 10,856 participants.

Pearls are an independent product of the Cochrane primary care group and are meant for educational use and not to guide clinical care.