Using patient-reported outcome measurement to improve patient care

Abstract

Patients at the center of care is often the stated focus of clinicians and healthcare services. The quality and safety movement has shown that effective organization of care is needed, in addition to professional skills. This movement has provided professionals and others with methods to improve both organization and practice for patients. These methods include measurement to give those carrying out improvement feedback about the effects of their changes. New types of measures that enable patients to report treatment outcomes can now be use in quality improvement and quality reporting to bring a renewed focus on making care more patient-centered. Although used for some time in research, these measures are relatively new tools for quality improvement and not all research measures are suitable for everyday feedback or improvement projects. The purpose of the paper is to provide an introduction to the use and value of patient-reported outcome measures in quality improvement and to give practical guidance and resources for using PROMs for quality improvement. It draws on the authors' experiences using patient reported outcomes measures for quality research and improvement and their workshop at the 2016 Tokyo ISQUA conference, as well as on reviews and guidance documents about the use of PROMs. It does not provide a comprehensive and systematic review of research, but an overview and introduction to PROMs for quality improvement.

The use of PROMs and shared decision‐making in medical encounters with patients: An opportunity to deliver value‐based health care to patients

“…Currently, the main rationale for collecting PROMs is to enable evaluation and comparison at an aggregate level. Yet it is increasingly recognized that PROMS should also be discussed with patients in routine medical encounters . Such use has been theorized to (a) increase patients' motivation to complete PROMs; (b) improve management and monitoring of patients' problems; (c) improve doctor‐patient communication; and (d) improve SDM and informed patient decisions .. PROMs are typically made available in the medical encounter through electronic health records and dashboards, displaying individual, N = 1, PROMs scores of patients over time.…”

Using PROMs during routine medical consultations: The perspectives of people with Parkinson’s disease and their health professionals

“…Integrating PROMs within routine clinical practice might increase the motivation of patients to complete PROMs (which currently proves challenging), and such use has also been theorized to improve management and monitoring of patients’ problems . Apart from that, using PROMs in routine medical consultations could improve doctor‐patient communication and informed patient decisions and as such improve quality of care. At an aggregated level, they can also be used to evaluate and compare treatment options and provider performance …”

“…Apart from that, using PROMs in routine medical consultations could improve doctor‐patient communication and informed patient decisions and as such improve quality of care. At an aggregated level, they can also be used to evaluate and compare treatment options and provider performance …”

“…Using PROMs during routine medical consultations by health professionals and patients would suit current ideas on person‐centred medicine and shared decision making . .…”

“…Where patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs) have traditionally been used to evaluate the effectiveness of medical interventions from the perspective of patients, 1 they are nowadays thought to have a more comprehensive role in health-care quality improvement. [2][3][4] PROMs are standardized questionnaires, completed by patients, measuring how they experience their health (ie symptoms, functional status). Well-known PROMs are quality of life questionnaires, such as the SF-36 and EQ-5D.…”