HealthPartners Institute

Home / Research / Research strengths / Patient-reported outcome measures

Patient-reported outcome measures

Looking at care from the patient’s perspective

Patient-centeredness is a national interest in medicine. Patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs) are hot topics in both research and practice. PROMs capture the patient’s perspective of the impact of care on quality of life and ability to function.

Quality measurement and incentives have been instrumental in improving the quality of care. But most existing quality measures do not seem to be of interest to patients. This could be because measures have not been incorporated directly into patient care. It may also be because most measures produce quantitative data that are hard for patients to understand and relate to.

The collection of PROMs began in HealthPartners’ orthopedics specialty before and after surgery, with high response rates. HealthPartners supports this work and its spread to other departments. More information is needed, on how PROMs impacts patients, clinicians and the care system.

Investigators

Key projects

PIONEER (Patient Imaging Outcomes Need Effective Empirical Research)

We surveyed patients to learn which outcomes were most important to them after serious back or stomach pain. Patients cared most about learning the cause of their problem, recovering daily life functions, reducing pain and returning to work. Reaching these goals was linked with greater satisfaction with their care.

Hip fractures & mobile outreach: patient-preferred outcomes tool development

The goal is to identify patient-preferred and patient-centered outcomes. That information will be used to develop PROMs appropriate for elderly patients with hip fractures living in or receiving post-fracture care in a nursing facility.

PROMOTE (Patient-Reported Outcome Measures Optimization via Technology and Engagement)

Our goal is to enhance the orthopedics PROMs initiative by learning what patients want to achieve after hip or knee replacement or spinal surgery. That information will be used to test the impact of giving this information to patients and to clinicians through the patient’s electronic health record (EHR). It will also be used to test the impact of comparative reporting of PROMs and health care costs to surgeons.

Implementation of electronic patient-reported symptoms in patients with cancer

Patient-reported symptoms, when efficiently collected and added to the patient’s EHR, can help clinicians and patients make clinical decisions that improve patient well-being. Our goal is to determine the usefulness of such a system.

Interviewing adults with cancer and caregivers about using symptom questionnaires to improve quality of cancer care

Although patient questionnaires are commonly used to assess health care experiences (e.g., satisfaction with care), symptom questionnaires have not been used to assess quality for cancer care. We aim to advance the science of quality measurement by testing how integrating symptom questionnaires into the workflow could improve patients’ and caregivers’ perceptions of their care.

Key publications