The Fundamentals of Patient-Reported Measures

In healthcare, the focus is often on clinical outcomes and measures such as blood pressure, cholesterol levels, and tumour size. These measures are important in diagnosing and monitoring medical conditions and determining the effectiveness of medical treatments. Clinical measures provide critical information for healthcare providers to make decisions about medical treatments and interventions.

However, the patient's experiences and outcomes are just as important as these clinical measures. Patient reported measures (PRMs) are a way to capture patients’ perceptions of their health and well-being. In this blog, we will discuss what PRMs are, why they are important, and how they are used in healthcare.

What Are Patient Reported Measures?

Patient reported measures (PRMs) are tools used to assess patients’ health status and quality of life from the patient’s perspective. These measures are based on patient self-reporting and can include surveys, questionnaires, interviews, and other data collection methods. PRMs can provide valuable insights into patients’ experiences, including their symptoms, functional status, psychological wellbeing, and satisfaction with care.

There are two major types of patient reported measures:

1. Patient Reported Outcome Measures (PROMs): 

Patient reported outcome measures are self-administered questionnaires or interviews that gather information directly from patients about the outcomes related to their health and wellbeing. These measures are designed to capture patients' perceptions of their physical, psychological, and social functioning and can help providers get a more accurate picture of how a particular treatment is impacting their patients' lives.

PROMs can also be used to assess the impact of medical treatments on specific populations, such as elderly patients or patients with chronic conditions. In these cases, PROMs can provide valuable information about the unique needs of these populations and help healthcare providers tailor their treatments to better meet these needs.

2. Patient Reported Experience Measures (PREMs):

Patient reported experience measures are tools used to gather information from patients about their experiences with healthcare. The objective of these measures is to give patients a voice in the assessment of the quality of care they receive and to improve the delivery of care by taking their perspectives into consideration.

PREMs can be used in various stages of the healthcare journey and are usually collected from patients via questionnaires, surveys, interviews, focus groups or patient portals or tools. They can cover a range of topics, including communication with healthcare providers, the physical environment of the healthcare setting and the overall quality of care received.

Why Are Patient Reported Measures Important?

PRMs are important because they allow healthcare providers to understand the patient’s perspective and tailor care to meet their unique needs. By capturing patients’ experiences, PRMs can help identify areas where care can be improved, as well as track progress over time. In addition, PRMs can help providers communicate with patients about their health and empower them to make informed decisions about their own care.

PRMs can also be used for research purposes, allowing researchers to study the patient experience and evaluate the effectiveness of interventions. By incorporating PRMs into research studies, researchers can capture the patient perspective in a standardised and systematic way, which can help improve the quality of research.

Under a value-based care delivery model, improving outcomes and experience is one of the best ways to show you are partnering with patients. It is also how you demonstrate that you are delivering the outcomes that matter to your patients and will be the metric which determines your fee for value under a value-based model of care – that is, the value you are returning to your patients.

How Are Patient Reported Measures Used In Healthcare?

PRMs can be used in a variety of healthcare settings, including primary care, specialty care, and hospital settings. In primary care, PRMs can be used to assess patients’ health status and identify areas where care can be improved. For example, a primary care provider might use a depression screening tool to assess a patient’s mental health status and determine if a referral to a mental health specialist is needed.

In specialty care, PRMs can be used to assess patients’ functional status and quality of life related to a specific condition. For example, a patient with rheumatoid arthritis might be asked to complete a survey about their pain, fatigue, and ability to perform daily activities.

In hospital settings, PRMs can be used to assess patients’ experiences of care. For example, patients might be asked to complete a survey about their hospital stay, including their satisfaction with the care they received, the quality of communication with their providers, and the cleanliness of the hospital environment.

How Do I Get Started With Patient Reported Measures?

Measuring outcomes and experience is one of the easiest places to start your value-based health care journey.

It's important not to create your own survey unless absolutely necessary as there are a lot of endorsed PROMs and PREMs surveys already available to use. Using an endorsed PROMs or PREMs survey ensures that the instrument has been scientifically validated and is reliable, valid, and responsive to changes in the patient's health status. The use of endorsed PROM surveys also helps to ensure that the data collected is comparable across different healthcare settings and patient populations.

A good place to start looking for validated patient reported measurement surveys is to check with your professional association or relevant state or territory health department or visit the ICHOM (International Consortium for Health Outcomes Measurement) or Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care websites.

 Patient reported measurement surveys can be undertaking using simple online survey tools or you may wish to use a specialist PROMs and/or PREMs software platform, that collects and analyses the data.

Do I Have To Use Patient Reported Measures In My Practice?

Whilst there is not currently a mandate for Australian health care organisations to collect patient reported outcome or experience measures, health reform is coming in Australia which indicates that practices will need to start measuring the value they are delivering to their patients under a 'pay for value' model.

Further Learning:

For further details on why measuring patient reported outcomes and experiences will become important to your practice in the near future, watch our free Kickstarter webinar - Australian Health Reform: What it means for you and your practice here.

Further Reading:

ICHOM (International Consortium for Health Outcomes Measurement)

Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care

Commission on Excellence and Innovation in Health (South Australia)