Oncology(DH) Contract Awarded To Develop Patient Reported Outcome Measures, UK
A new contract that will help improve the use of Patient Reported Outcome Measures (PROMs), which support the NHS to collect patient feedback on the success of their operations, was today awarded to the Royal College of Surgeons and London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine.
NHS hospitals in England now routinely use PROMs when asking patients who undergo four common operations to assess how successful they felt the operation was at reducing symptoms and disability and improving their quality of life.
The RCS and LSHTM have been commissioned to look at how the data, representing over 200 000 patients a year, can best be used to stimulate improvements in the quality of care patients receive.
They will look at:
- Developing new ways of analysing the data - innovative ways of comparing the outcomes achieved at different hospitals will be undertaken.
- Better publication - finding new ways to present the huge amounts of statistical information that PROMs will generate in a way that is meaningful to the public, clinicians and those who manage and commission health services.
- Comparing cost-effectiveness - To support the work of the National Joint Registry PROMs data for hip and knee replacements will be linked to the existing National Joint Registry. This will give a better picture of the outcomes of joint replacement, in order to provide patients with the hip and knee prosthetics which have been shown to be the most clinically and cost effective.
Health Minister Lord Darzi said:
"While a surgeon may deem a hip replacement successful because the procedure has been performed perfectly on the day, the patient will rightly disagree if they are still in pain and continue to have a poor quality of life some months down the line. This programme is the first of its kind in the world and the information collected will empower patients to choose a hospital that achieves the best results for the operation they need."
"The work of the Royal College of Surgeons and London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine is vital in helping PROMs to support strengthened commissioning across the NHS by offering PCTs the evidence they need to buy the best services based on how favourably patients rated their treatment."
John Black, President of the Royal College of Surgeons said:
"More sophisticated information about surgical outcomes will help prove which techniques will benefit which patients and that will in turn enable surgeons to improve patient care. A lot of clinical data are already collected on operations and finding ways to connect that with patient reported outcomes would be of great use to surgeons."
Professor Nick Black of the LSHTM, one of the leaders of the project, said:
"This is the most ambitious attempt worldwide to incorporate the views of patients in assessing the outcome of health care. We are delighted to be involved in developing ways of maximising the benefits that can be obtained from these data."
Notes
1. Further information about PROMs can be found here.
2. Piloting the routine use of PROMs was carried out in 2006-8 by the RCS and LSHTM for five surgical interventions (hip & knee replacements, inguinal hernias, cataract surgery and varicose veins surgery) This led to the current nationwide programme which is being managed by Northgate Information Solutions Limited
Department of Health, UK