Monthly diaries
Patients were also asked to complete monthly diaries (paper or online) during the 12-month study period, which were designed to record more comprehensive data on healthcare encounters, out-of-pocket costs, and indirect cost (i.e., productivity loss) that they, family members or caregivers incurred as part of AF-related care. This includes family physician visits, walk-in and/or after-hours clinics, specialist visits, INR testing, emergency department visits, and hospitalizations. For each type of healthcare resource, the patient was instructed to record the monthly number of visits, time spent on visit(s), out-of-pocket visit expenses, distance travelled, and time missed from work. Patients were also invited to record the monthly time costs for informal caregivers, including the hours missed from work or time spent accompanying the patient to appointments or providing AF-related care.The monthly diaries were meant to supplement the self-administered questionnaire by providing a more detailed picture of the resource use for each patient, such as the time, expenses and distance travelled to received AF-related care. They were designed with input from health economists and clinical experts to ensure that items aligned with healthcare services a typical AF patient would seek. It was anticipated that monthly data collection from the diaries would minimize recall bias compared to the 12-month self-administered questionnaire [