Changes in the quality of doctor-patient communication between 1982 and 2001: an observational study on hypertension care as perceived by patients and general practitioners

Background: The rise of evidence-based medicine may have implications for the doctor-patient interaction. In recent decades, a shift towards a more task-oriented approach in general practice indicates a development towards more standardised healthcare. Objective: To examine whether this shift is accompanied by changes in perceived quality of doctor-patient communication. Design: GP observers and patient observers performed quality assessments of Dutch General Practice consultations on hypertension videotaped in 1982-1984 and 2000-2001. In the first cohort (1982-1984) 81 patients were recorded by 23 GPs and in the second cohort (2000-2001) 108 patients were recorded by 108 GPs. The GP observers and patient observers rated the consultations on a scale from 1 to 10 on three quality dimensions: medical technical quality, psychosocial quality and quality of interpersonal behaviour. Multilevel regression analyses were used to test whether a change occurred over time. Results: The findings showed a significant improvement over time on all three dimensions. There was no difference between the quality assessments of GP observers and patient observers. The three different dimensions were moderately to highly correlated and the assessments of GP observers showed less variability in the second cohort. Conclusions: Hypertension consultations in general practice in the Netherlands received higher quality assessments by general practitioners and patients on medical technical quality, psychosocial quality and the quality of interpersonal behaviour in 2000-2001 as compared with the 1980s. The shift towards a more task-oriented approach in hypertension consultations does not seem to detract from individual attention for the patient. In addition, there is less variation between general practitioners in the quality assessments of more recent consultations. The next step in this line of research is to unravel the factors that determine patients' quality assessments of doctor-patient communication.