Relational Continuity from the Patient Perspective: Comparison of Primary Healthcare Evaluation Instruments La continuité relationnelle du point de vue du patient : comparaison entre instruments d'évaluation des soins de santé primaires

Abstract The operational definition of relational continuity is “a therapeutic relationship between a patient and one or more providers that spans various healthcare events and results in accumu-lated knowledge of the patient and care consistent with the patient’s needs.” Objective: To examine how well relational continuity is measured in validated instruments that evaluate primary healthcare from the patient’s perspective. Method: 645 adults with at least one healthcare contact in the previous 12 months responded to six instruments that evaluate primary healthcare. Five subscales map to relational con-tinuity: the Primary Care Assessment urvey (PCAs s, two subscales), the Primary Care Assessment Tool – hort Form (PCAT-s s) and the Components of Primary Care Index (CPCI, two subscales). cores were normalized for descriptive comparison. Exploratory and sconfirmatory (structural equation modelling) factor analysis examined fit to operational defi-nition, and item response theory analysis examined item performance on common constructs.