Patient Preferences for the Primary Care Chronic Disease Management Program: A Discrete Choice Experiment

Abstract

The growing social cost burden of chronic diseases in South Korea has led to the implementation of various chronic disease management programs. However, patient preferences for these programs have remained largely unexplored. We conducted a discrete choice experiment (DCE) to systematically evaluate patient preferences for the Primary Care Chronic Disease Management Program. Through literature review and patient interviews, we identified 5 attributes and 14 levels to develop a DCE questionnaire consisting of 17 choice sets. Our study population comprised patients with hypertension or diabetes in their 40s and 50s. A conditional logit model was used to calculate the relative importance of attributes and willingness to pay for each attribute. The results revealed that personalized in-person consultation, personalized remote consultation, monetary incentives, and out-of-pocket costs significantly influence patient preferences, while the length of consultation time does not. Patients with both hypertension and diabetes placed higher values on personalized in-person and remote services compared to the two groups with hypertension only or diabetes only. The willingness to pay for the monetary incentive was substantial, even greater than that for in-person and remote services. These results can be used to inform policies aimed at better designing the primary care chronic disease management program.