Outcome-focused care has been more than just a hot topic lately; it has been the driving force in many sweeping changes that have shaken up the healthcare industry. Healthcare research has directed its eye upon outcomes to ensure that providers are actually adding value to patients’ lives instead of merely putting a metaphorical Band-Aid on their problems.
In the quest to obtain more consistent positive outcomes, many healthcare market research teams have run into a wall when it comes to collecting quality data. A solution to their problem is to not just merely copy admissions data, but to ask the patients themselves questions about their treatment outcome.
This approach of using patient reported outcome measurements (PROM) has opened up new insights for healthcare market research and shone a light on genuinely improving healthcare measures.
1. Realize the Place PROMs Have in Your Process
PROM reports differ greatly from patient experience measures or hospital-reported data. In the former, the patient could have had great courtesy from staff during their treatment but still had a poor outcome. In the latter, a hospital’s measurement of outcomes is often lean — based solely on readmissions, incidents of hospital-borne infections or objective measurements like how a diabetes patient’s blood pressure improved over time.
A PROM report by contrast captures a more holistic view of the patient’s outcome while touching upon subjective criteria like pain and mobility. These factors may not seem standardized, but patterns over time can help your healthcare research team categorize them and come up with a scaling system. In the end, hospitals receive a much more meaningful report on their former patients.
2. Start Small
Organizations like the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill are partnering with the U.S.’s PROM-focused PROMIS program to evaluate its effectiveness with key patient groups: nephrotic syndrome, a kidney disease that can prompt swelling; sickle cell anemia, which can lead to acute pain episodes; cancer patients currently undergoing chemotherapy; and asthma patients.
These groups have the high levels of subjectivity in terms of their outcomes due to the difficulty in measuring things like pain, swelling or severity of an asthma attack. By following them closely, UNC can monitor their outcomes and quality of life through their own self-reporting.
3. Make Patient Reporting Convenient
While the PROM field is still new, eager participants can carve new territory by making self-reporting more convenient. Mobile apps, online surveys and even survey kiosks in pharmacies or outpatient centers can encourage participation while allowing healthcare providers to follow up on outcomes and track data longitudinally.
Altogether, these efforts will help you set a new high standard in outcome assessment and ensure that your healthcare organization genuinely enriches lives. You can use our guide to survey best practices to collect high-quality data using as few questions as possible during your PROM surveys.