| Medical offset effect, the reduction of overall health care use with the introduction of psychotherapy, has recently become a promising area of research for marriage and family therapists (MFTs). Law and Crane (2000) suggested that family members of an identified patient experienced a reduction in overall health care utilization following therapy. MFTs conducting medical offset effect research have struggled to gain access to medical records or have simply asked subjects to self-report their medical utilization.; In lieu of the costly and time-consuming process of obtaining medical records, researchers may use a self-report measure of medical utilization such as the Patient Assessment Questionnaire (PAQ) to obtain a medical utilization history from research subjects. The PAQ measures comprehensive health history including medical care utilization. As stated previously however, there are potential problems with relying on self-report for medical utilization measures. Mainly, self-report may be an unreliable measure of medical utilization.; In order to address this uncertainty, this project evaluated the PAQ's accuracy as a self-report of medical utilization. Questions concerning physician visits and hospital stays were found to be reliable and valid. Conversely, questions concerning emergency room visits and mental health visits were found to have reliable but lacked construct validity. Results and limitations are discussed. |
