Capturing and Measuring Patient Voice with PRO-PMs
Patient and family engagement is increasingly recognized as an essential component of high-quality clinical care.
Clinicians and organizations use different approaches to assess the quality of care from a patient’s perspective including:
- Patient-reported outcomes
- Patient-reported outcome measures
- Patient-reported outcome-based performance measures
A patient-reported outcome (PRO) is “any report of the status of a patient’s health condition that comes directly from the patient without interpretation of the patient’s response by a clinician or anyone else. (FDA 2009) PROs may include reports of symptoms, functional status, or quality of care.
Patient-reported outcome-based measures (PROMs) are instruments—usually self-reported questionnaires—that are used to measure PROs.
A patient-reported outcome-based performance measure (PRO-PM) is a performance measure that is based on aggregated PROM data collected directly from patients.
Incorporating PROs within quality measures are important focuses of both the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) and the Academy. In a 2022 report, CMS prioritized PRO-PM in its Meaningful Measures 2.0 framework. The design and implementation of PROs, PROMs, and subsequent PRO-PMs present unique challenges. The Academy is assessing approaches to develop meaningful, otolaryngology-specific tools to measure patient voice in the Reg-entSM registry.
The Academy’s inaugural PROM centered on shared decision making for age-related hearing loss. Our current review focuses on postsurgical outcomes in patients with chronic sinusitis, via the Sino-Nasal Outcome Test (SNOT-22). The Academy looks forward to sharing updates on this progress. You may also visit the Reg-ent Registry Patient-Reported Outcomes web page at https://www.entnet.org/quality-practice/reg-ent-clinical-data-registry/reg-ent-registry-patient-reported-outcomes/.
References
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Food and Drug Administration. Guidance for industry: patient-reported outcomes measures: use in medical product development to support labeling claims. 2009. http://www.fda.gov/downloads/Drugs/GuidanceComplianceRegulatoryInformation/Guidances/UCM193282.pdf. Accessed April 18, 2022.
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. 2022 measures under consideration list program-specific measure needs and priorities. 2022. https://www.cms.gov/files/document/2022-muc-list-program-specific-measure-needs-and-priorities.pdf-0. Accessed April 22, 2022.