The Role of Patient Reported Outcomes (PROs) in Healthcare Policy Making

Abstract

Amit Dang and Shilpa Mendon

Patients are the most valuable and authoritative source of information on outcomes like health-related quality of life, functional status, symptom and symptom burden and health behaviors. However, even traditionally, the only information collected from patients was feedback on satisfaction or experience with care. Patients have always remained an untapped resource in assessing the quality of healthcare and of long-term support services. The scenario has however changed with the increasing realization of Patient-Reported Outcome Measures (PROMs) as an efficient quality improvement tool. Routine collection of patient-reported outcomes (PROs) to inform, compare and manage healthcare professionals and facilities are implemented in a number of countries, including England, Australia, United States of America, Sweden, and the Netherlands. This review article discusses examples of PROMs in routine practice in some countries to illustrate the importance of building capacity and infrastructure to capture PRO routinely and utilize that data for developing performance measures for assessing provider’s quality and efficiency. Also, discussed are the barriers to implementation of PROMs and factors responsible for its minimal influence on patient outcomes and ineffectiveness in comparing hospital performance. Finally lesson for health care policy makers especially Indian health care policy makers for successful implementation of PROMs are summarized.