A key component of value-based healthcare is in our view patient-friendly and standardized measurement of patient-relevant outcomes.
Growing evidence suggests that routine measurement of patient-reported outcomes (PROs) can improve the relationship between healthcare provider and patient, facilitate shared decision making, and helps to deliver the right care at the right time. This may reduce referrals, consultations, hospital admissions, improve patient and physician satisfaction, quality of care, andquality of life of patients. However, these positive effects can only be fully leveraged if PROs are collected from all patients in a patient-friendly, standardized and comparable fashion using valid and reliable PRO measures (PROMs).
One of the biggest barriers is the sheer variety of available PROMs with associated challenges on translation, validation, implementation, and interpretation, making it difficult to obtain valid and comparable healthcare outcomes. However, there is growing evidence that certain outcomes, like physical function, pain, fatigue, sleep disturbance, anxiety, depression, and the ability to participate in social roles and activities, are relevant for most people, irrespective of their health condition, and can be measured with universally applicable PROMs.
The Patient-Reported Outcomes Measurement Information System (PROMIS®) offers a global approach to standardization of PROs and PROMs which has the potential to accelerate value-based healthcare by facilitating the collection of accurate and comparable health outcomes, across healthcare settings and medical conditions, that matter most to patients. PROMIS was developed by several U.S.-based academic institutions and the National Institutes of Health (NIH), funded by the NIH, to revolutionize PRO assessment in research and clinical practice, by establishing a core set of PROMs measuring the most relevant symptoms and functions across patients with a wide variety of (chronic) diseases and conditions.
PROMIS is maintained by the HealthMeasures group and fostered and promoted by the international PROMIS Health Organization, including 20 PROMIS National Centers (PNCs). The Dutch-Flemish PNC is an international frontrunner and example of widespread adoption of PROMIS.
The Dutch-Flemish PNC has translated over 30 item banks (resulting in >30 patient-friendly computerized adaptive tests (CAT) and >160 short form PROMs), to measure the most relevant PROs across healthcare systems in the Netherland and Belgium.