Understanding physicians’ and patients’ perspectives on asthma management

Abstract

Physician-patient discordance in goals of care could negatively impact health outcomes. Our study aims to understand whether what drives specialists’ decisions in selecting asthma treatments is consistent with the priorities of moderate-to-severe asthma patients.

Physician perceptual data are from the Ipsos Severe Asthma Therapy Monitor, an online medical chart review study conducted among 110 specialists treating severe asthma patients in the US from November-December 2020. Patient data are from the Ipsos Syndicated Severe Asthma Patient Community, an online qualitative study which gathered perceptions from 216 patients with moderate-to-severe asthma in France, Germany, Italy, Spain, UK, Canada, and Japan from April-September 2020.

When selecting asthma treatment, ‘improves quality of life’ (55% vs. 37%) and ‘reduces number of exacerbations’ (54% vs. 45%) are among the most important considerations for both sampled specialists and patients in our studies. 56% of sampled specialists rated ‘reduces number of emergency room (ER) visits and hospitalizations’ as the most important attribute, followed by ‘reduces need for daily oral corticosteroids (OCS)’ (51%) and ‘reduces need for burst of OCS’ (48%). In comparison, ‘reduces ER visits and hospitalizations’ and ‘reduces OCS use’ are less important for sampled patients, with only 1 in 5 selecting these attributes.

In our studies, sampled specialists tend to emphasize more on preventing consequences of worsening asthma while sampled patients primarily want to see improvement in their overall wellbeing. This study highlights the importance of understanding patients’ needs to provide better care. Further investigation using comparator cohort is warranted.