Anticipating trends toward generalism in medicine, the rheumatology community has begun to set forth guidelines for managing osteoarthritis (OA). These guidelines emphasize a comprehensive approach toward nondrug treatment (e.g., patient education, exercise, social support) and a conservative approach to drug management to minimize the side effects of nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs). Unfortunately, few primary care physicians provide conservative, comprehensive care for OA as promoted in the recent rheumatology literature. Also, although researchers have studied individual elements of a comprehensive approach to OA care and largely validated them in isolation, no research support exists to suggest that uniformly adopting OA care guidelines will result in better patient outcomes and/or reduced costs of care.

In this project, we will implement, in a controlled fashion, and evaluate a comprehensive plan for treating patients with knee OA by primary care physicians in a managed care environment. Comprehensive care for knee OA will be guided by a procedure designed to introduce and reinforce (a) an array of nondrug, self-care procedures intended to combat joint pain and preserve function and (b) a stepped protocol for drug management of knee pain that minimizes the risk of adverse side effects of NSAIDs.

Participants will be 300 patients with a confirmed clinical diagnosis of knee OA who receive their medical care in a large health maintenance organization (HMO) in Indianapolis, Indiana. We will randomly allocate geographically discrete offices of the HMOs to experimental (OA care by algorithm) or control (routine OA care) conditions (150 subjects/group). Patients who enroll in the study at each location will receive care for knee OA for 1 year under the guidelines specified by random assignment.

We will measure outcomes at baseline and 3 months, 6 months, and 12 months after enrollment, and outcomes will include joint pain, physical function, drug side effects, quality of life (i.e., general health status), satisfaction with OA care, and direct costs of medical care. We think that comprehensive care, as guided by our algorithms, will result in significant improvement in knee pain, physical function, and patient satisfaction, and lower direct costs compared to care delivered under routine circumstances.