Identifying Patient Benefits of a Novel Tool in Routine Prenatal Care: An Exploratory Factor Analysis Approach

To address the need for cost-of-care conversations in prenatal care, the CONTINUE (cost conversations in routine prenatal care) study was conducted with prenatal patients to better understand the benefits of implementing a cost-of-care conversation “cost” tool into routine obstetrics (OB) care. This research team conducted a multi-phase, mixed-methods research study to identify 18 target benefits of a cost tool to initiate and standardize cost-of-care conversation and, subsequently, developed and validated a cost tool. The novel cost tool was piloted and data pertaining to target benefits were collected through interviews and surveys. To assess the cost tool’s utility, data from interviews and surveys were unified and exploratory factor analysis was performed to classify the underlying factor structure of the 18 benefit item responses. Data includes patients’ self-reported ratings of benefit items, as collected from third trimester prenatal patient participants who received the tool at the beginning of their prenatal care in three midwestern-based hospital clinics within one healthcare system. The present study details the factor analysis approach used to identify the three final factors that emerged from the data representing prenatal patients benefits of utilizing a cost tool. This analysis provides a framework for exploring patient-specific predictors of experiencing identified benefits (i.e. factors) of a novel cost tool incorporated into routine OB care.