Introduction: COVID-19 pandemic has significantly impacted the incidence and severity of Eating Disorders (EDs), a growing pathology marked by a decreasing age of onset. In Italy, there is currently a lack of knowledge concerning the useful principles to develop a standardised protocol for establishing a priority setting system in ED care. Increase in requests for treatment together with the scarcity of economic and human resources available highlights the urgency of this issue.
Purpose: Since everyone has a personal opinion of the most important features to consider in order to define the "priority patients", the study aims to evaluate the subjective perceived importance of various factors among caregivers, clinicians, and (former)patients- individuals with direct experience of the disorder.
Method: A total of 357 subjects (caregivers 17%, clinicians 32%, [former]patients 51%), filled out the questionnaire included in the article "A Delphi study to explore clinician and lived experience perspectives on setting priorities in eating disorder services". Respondents rated the importance of nine dimensions (e.g. diagnostic factors, duration of EDs, social context) on a Likert scale. Qualitative and quantitative analyses were conducted to highlight priority conditions and differences between groups.
Results: Qualitative analyses show that the privileged issues among the whole sample are mental and physical health; whereas the chronological order of request appears to be the least significant. The following aspects are considered more relevant by clinicians and caregivers than patients: early onset (F(2, 162) = 16.5, p<0.001), physical severity (F(2, 151) = 13.9, p<0.001), quantity and frequency of compensatory behaviors (F(2, 166) = 5.90, p<0.010). Patients significantly underestimate the "body weight" factor importance (F(2, 354) = 4.34, p<0.05).
Conclusion: Results indicate the need to create a biopsychosocial assessment tool, including psycho-physical risk indicators, to establish the priority to access care, finding a compromise between the above-mentioned categories.