Optimizing MS Care: Multiple Sclerosis Patients' Perspectives and Priorities for their MS Care

Understanding patient preferences and priorities about their MS care is critical to promoting active health care participation and health. Comprehensive and effecti care, in which patients are informed and active participants, requires understanding of a wide range of patient and care provider characteristics, the interactions and interrelationships between these characteristics, and the broader social, financial, and environmental contexts in which they occur. Our objectives in the proposed project are to complete a comprehensive and multidimensional analysis of the perspectives and priorities of MS patients about their MS care in order to promote patients’ active participation in their health care, and help the National MS Society and health care providers design individualized care models based on patient preferences, concerns, means of access, needs, and barriers. We propose to accomplish this objective through the following steps: 1. Develop and evaluate ICF-based instruments for use in evaluating MS patients’ experiences and preferences within a variety of clinical and community MS care settings. 2. Use the established instruments and additional measures (incorporating demographic; health; MS care provider; MS knowledge and self-management practices; and information access routes preferences) in a large national sample of adults with MS in order to collect and analyze data related to MS patients experiences, preferences, and priorities for MS care. 3. Analyze the data to identify health care priorities, experiences, and preferences. 4. Identify meaningful patient subgroups in order to promote the design, development, implementation, and evaluation of individualized health care models. 5. Analyze and evaluate the relationships between patient and MS care provider characteristics and key clinical and psychosocial outcomes.