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Determining how to collect and use patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs) continues to be an area of discussion, and in some cases frustration.1–5 Gaining a greater depth of knowledge concerning a patient’s initial health status as well as improvement after a medical or surgical intervention, would provide a clearer understanding of needed care paths and outcomes of treatments, oftentimes missing from our current healthcare processes.6 7 While PROMs are not a new idea, the ability to electronically collect, report and use the data has become more relevant in recent years. As such, this work focuses on the challenges and lessons learnt from implementing electronic PROMs (ePROMs) within a destination medical centre which provides team-based comprehensive care for patients.
Implementations in multiple departments and disease specific areas of care throughout the organisation took place between January 2016 and March 2018. The International Consortium for Health Outcomes Measurement (ICHOM) standard sets were used in each department as the primary survey tool, as scores could easily be calculated and the disease specific questionnaires administered at the point of care demonstrated a good fit for the organisation’s practices.6 8 ICHOM Standard Sets are global, standardised and validated questionnaires that have been combined into a set that captures information for the provider at a level that patients understand. Pre-existing intake assessments were evaluated within each department and service line and subsequently were merged or replaced with the ICHOM sets to create customised comprehensive condition-specific survey sets.
In all cases, collection of the survey sets at patient intake provides a baseline for changes to be monitored as well as provides context for patient concerns, needs and areas in which clinicians may need to further inquire. Follow-up data are collected after operations or procedures and changes in patient responses are monitored and assessed. In the …
Footnotes
Funding The authors have not declared a specific grant for this research from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.
Competing interests None declared.
Patient consent Not required.
Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; internally peer reviewed.