Grant: Project Grant - PA: CMA Foundation - Virtual Care

Chronic diseases such as cancer, heart attack, stroke and diabetes cause patient suffering and cost the Canadian economy over $190 billion/year in health system costs and lost productivity. Currently, our health system is overwhelmingly focused on the treatment of these diseases rather than their prevention, but relatively small expenditures in prevention have the potential to save substantial costs down the road. Our team has developed a new approach to delivering preventative care that we call BETTER. BETTER is led by a non-physician health care provider such as a nurse or dietitian who has special training in helping people to change their health behaviors such as improving their diet, increasing their physical activity and limiting alcohol use. The BETTER approach is directed by the patient, meaning that patients choose which goals they would like to work on and which strategies they will use to meet those goals. In a previous study, BETTER improved chronic disease prevention and screening by 37% over existing approaches, and we are continuing this research program with related studies. The project we are proposing here will test the BETTER approach delivered via video, telephone or in-person. We will compare things like how many patients agree to participate in a prevention visit in-person, by phone, or by video, whether they were able to successfully connect for the visit, and how they rated their satisfaction with the visit and the quality of the communication with the provider. This information will be used to inform current plans to deliver BETTER and other programs using video and phone, and will also be used by us to plan for a larger and longer study to compare patient's behaviour change and uptake of disease screening tests when these different communication methods are used. The results of this study will help shift the focus of the health system towards disease prevention rather than treatment and will help increase accessibility to healthcare.