Grant: Doctoral Award - Frederick Banting and Charles Best Canada Graduate Scholarships

Chronic diseases such as diabetes and high blood pressure are increasing around the world. This is a problem because the effective management of chronic diseases require considerable effort by patients and health professionals. Further, these patients also require many healthcare services such as emergency room visits, physician visits and medications to help control their disease. Detailed care plans developed by health professionals in partnership with patients are being encouraged, which cover everything from required medical tests and medications to exercise and diet, with the goal they will improve patients' health. In 2009, in order to improve health care for Albertans with chronic diseases, Alberta Health implemented new health policies to pay physicians to create care plans for patients who have several chronic diseases. Following its introduction, physicians in Alberta were found to be very actively providing and billing for these plans. In 2012, Alberta Health also began to pay pharmacists to develop care plans for patients, given their newly expanded scope of practice in Alberta. However, the success of providing these care plans has not been evaluated to determine whether they are improving patients' health, as well as whether patients are satisfied with the quality of care provided. We aim to study what types of patients have received these care plans, whether their health care and outcomes have improved, and whether patients think they have received good quality care using patient-reported surveys. We will compare their health outcomes and quality of care to patients with similar disease who did not receive these care plans.