Abstract
BACKGROUND: Novel population-based integrated care services are being developed to adequately serve the growing number of elderly people. Suitable, reliable and valid measurement instruments are needed to evaluate the quality of care delivered. OBJECTIVE: To develop a measure to evaluate the quality of integrated care from the perspective of elderly people, the Patient Assessment of Integrated Elderly Care (PAIEC), and then to assess its psychometric properties. METHODS/DESIGN: After the Patient Assessment of Chronic Illness Care was adapted to the PAIEC, a cross-sectional postal-survey study was performed among 223 elderly people who received integrated elderly care and support. We assessed the factor structure, internal consistency, known groups and divergent validity using robust nonparametric tests. RESULTS: Mean age of participants was 83 years (standard deviation 4.7), and 69% was female. The original five-factor model was rejected; a good fit was found for a three-factor model, when excluding the item on patients' satisfaction with care. The PAIEC and its subscales showed good internal consistency (ordinal alphas > 0.90). Known-groups validity was supported regarding number of medications, prevalence of chronic conditions and home care received. No differences were found between groups based on sociodemographic aspects. Divergent validity was supported by low correlations (Spearman's rank correlation coefficients < 0.30) between PAIEC scales and measures of quality of life, complexity of care needs and frailty. CONCLUSION: The PAIEC seems to have considerable potential as a reliable and valid measurement instrument that evaluates quality of integrated care and support from the perspective of elderly people.