Improving patient-centered care: Agenda-setting in occupational medicine

Objective: To improve patient satisfaction with care at an occupational medicine clinic by promoting agenda-setting before the visit. Methods: We distributed agenda-setting form to 77 randomly selected patients attending an occupational health clinic and used another randomly selected sample of 36 patients as control group. Patients completed a survey regarding the acceptability of this procedure and whether they felt clinicians addressed their important concerns. Results: Most patients found the formhelpful (73%) and wanted it offered in future visits (74%). There was no statistically significant difference in terms of the proportion of patients expressing greatest satisfaction by answering, "strongly agree" (intervention [86%], control [97%]; odds ratio, 0.17; 95% confidence interval, 0.02 to 1.38; P = 0.06). Conclusion: Agenda-setting can improve patient experience before occupational visits but does not improve postvisit satisfaction.