NAACOs Spring 2022 Conference Themes: Patient Reported Outcomes and Quality Metrics
In April, I attended my first National Association of ACOs conference in Baltimore, where speakers and experts shared their insights on a number of topics–from sustainable telehealth and remote patient monitoring to quality care and where healthcare is in its value-based care journey.
I have already reflected on some of the key points brought up about building sustainable Remote Patient Monitoring programs. This time, I am highlighting some key points that were discussed regarding how we will use digital data to improve quality care – and how use of that data is (or should be) incorporated into quality metrics.
We all know that the patient’s voice is incredibly important in their care, so why have Patient Reported Outcomes Measures (PROMs) not been more widely adopted?
As patients, we are all familiar with the sub-par process of Patient Reported Outcomes (PROs). Typically, PRO surveys are on paper, bundled together on the clipboard with the rest of your pre-appointment paperwork. Maybe half of the time your physician will actually address the responses that you indicated 5 minutes before. Digital PROMs surveys are rarely used in clinical practice or clinical trials. Why?
According to the experts at NAACOs, there are three main reasons for this: 1) We don’t have the tools to seamlessly administer PROMs and have responses seamlessly documented back into the clinical workflow, when clinicians get results of PROMs, they don’t always know how to interpret the scores and what actions they should take, and most importantly - PROMs are not included in any quality metrics, except PHQ-9 screening for depression. We all know that it is very hard to drive adoption of new workflows or activities in healthcare if they cannot be justified from a financial perspective.
At Rimidi, we have built Survé to address this need. With Survé, providers can send PROMs, SDOH questionnaires or other surveys directly to their patient’s device in an appointment-driven or data-driven context. As we are tightly integrated with leading EHRs, patient responses are visible within the existing workflow and allow for trending, visualization and incorporation into clinical notes. In addition, our Clinical Decision Support engine can drive interpretations and actionable insights based on patient responses. The technical capability is there - we need the quality incentives to change clinical behavior.
What does the next chapter of the value-based care and quality journey look like? A vision for the future of quality measures from the CEO of the National Quality Forum
First and foremost, quality measures should be defined by the two parties involved in healthcare: patients and providers. What do patients define as quality care, and what are providers trying to achieve through delivering quality care?
To answer these questions, three categories of Quality measures needed to get a more complete picture of the patient and population:
- clinical data,
- patient reported data, and
- health equity data.
But it isn’t just about collecting and measuring quality data. That data needs to link processes of care to the outcomes we are trying to achieve. We need to make better use of quality data to drive referrals to providers who achieve better outcomes.
Rimidi brings digital patient reported outcomes together with other patient-generated data from devices as well as relevant clinical data from EHRs to drive patient-specific insights and actions – all within the existing EHR workflow.
