Patient Reported Outcomes: A Primer on the Conceptual Frameworks
Clinicians often refer to patient reported outcomes (PROs) as patient surveys, quality of life measures, questionnaires, or waiting room activities. But the formal definition comes from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in the United States, which defines PROs as: “…any report of the status of a patient’s health condition that comes directly from the […]
New in PROs
New articles continue to add perspectives and ideas about patient-reported outcomes (PROs). Here is some recent literature for those looking to better understand PROs and their effects on the healthcare system and clinical care.
Black N, Burke L, Forrest CB, Sieberer UR, Ahmed S, Valderas JM, Bartlett SJ, Alonso J. Patient-reported outcomes: pathways to better health, better services, and better societies. Quality of life research. 2016 May 1;25(5):1103-12.
Basch E. Patient-Reported Outcomes—Harnessing Patients’ Voices to Improve Clinical Care. New England Journal of Medicine. 2017 Jan 12;376(2):105-8.
Guest Post: Selecting a PRO instrument for use at the point-of-care: the experience of the Alberta Ocular Brachytherapy Program
Patient-reported outcomes (PROs) were originally developed for clinical trials, where they were incorporated into regular data collection along with biospecimen sampling, testing, or other measures. As a result, PRO instruments could afford to be lengthy – many questions could be asked to capture the fine nuances of symptom severity and functional status. Read more
Guest Post: Patients with chronic OAB – how much do they know about their condition?
From a healthcare systems perspective, chronic conditions represent some of the most challenging healthcare needs to address. Studies in both the United States and Canada consistently demonstrate that these conditions are amongst those with the widest variations in their utilization of resources… Read more
Guest Post: Using mHealth to collect patient reported outcomes from youths with physical disabilities
Youths with physical disabilities often experience pain (Ehde et al., 2009). This pain can cause considerable disruption in their daily activities such as sleep, appetite, family functions, and peer relationships (Oddson et al., 2006). Clinically managing this pain requires regular surveillance, often based on patient self-reports. Read more
Performance Anxiety and PROMs
On February 25th, members from the VALHUE study team attended the 26th annual CHSPR health policy conference titled “Performance Anxiety”, in Vancouver, BC. The conference featured discussions about the current state of affairs of performance measurement in Canada and its impact on healthcare system change. Included in that was the role patients play in engaging in research through the use of patient reported outcome measures (PROMs) and patient reported experience measures (PREMs). Read more
Collecting patient reported outcomes in the digital age
Collection of patient reported outcomes typically occur in three ways: interviews, self-administration or a combination of both (Desphande et al., 2011). As the general population becomes ever more tech-savvy, researchers are moving towards electronic administration of PROs to collect patient outcomes data. The use of electronic PROs can be more beneficial than paper based PROs as they reduce data entry errors, allow for notifications to be sent to the patient and may be viewed as more convenient than other methods, thus increasing the likelihood of patient participation. Read more
Sharing our Canadian experience with PROMs at the 2013 National PROMs Summit in London, England
The Second National PROMs Summit focusing on the Development of PROMs in Clinical Practice at a Local Level was held on November 14th, 2013 in London, England. The conference was attended by Angie Chan, Project Manager, on behalf of the VALHUE study team, whose presentation garnered interest among the mostly UK-based attendees. Read more
Reflections on the 2013 Canadian Association for Health Services and Policy Research conference
The Canadian Association for Health Services and Policy Research held their annual conference in Vancouver from May 28 to 31, 2013. The conference was well attended by the Health Care Funding team, and we gave a presentation about our evaluation of the effects of introducing activity-based funding in BC and a poster about linking costs of care across different parts of the health system. Read more