Collecting patient reported outcomes in the digital age
Collection of patient reported outcomes typically occur in three ways: interviews, self-administration or a combination of both (Desphande et al., 2011). As the general population becomes ever more tech-savvy, researchers are moving towards electronic administration of PROs to collect patient outcomes data. The use of electronic PROs can be more beneficial than paper based PROs as they reduce data entry errors, allow for notifications to be sent to the patient and may be viewed as more convenient than other methods, thus increasing the likelihood of patient participation. Read more
Measuring the Patient’s View of the Queue: Challenges and Strategies for Collecting Patient Reported Outcomes Data for Waitlisted Surgical Patients
Vancouver Coastal Health, in collaboration with the University of British Columbia, is collecting Patient Reported Outcomes (PROs) to quantify the effects of waiting for surgical care. General and condition-specific health status, pain, and depression are being measured at three points during the patient’s episode of care: 1) upon registration to a surgical wait list, 2) prior to surgery, and 3) post-recovery. These repeated measurements allow us to evaluate the impact of wait time on the patient’s health while they wait for surgery and after treatment. Read more
Learn more about PROMs
The VALHUE study team will be showing off our research at the Canadian Association for Health Services and Policy Research‘s (CAHSPR) annual conference in Vancouver on May 28 – 31, 2013. Our poster presentation is about selecting a generic health status instrument for the systematic collection of patient-reported outcomes and our oral presentation will focus on lessons from the collection of patient-reported outcomes and knowledge translation exercises. Read more
VALHUE
There is little understanding of whether shorter wait times are associated with better clinical outcomes, and whether policy-linked initiatives to increase access to surgery are associated with consistent changes in health improvement. The literature regarding the effect of wait times on health is significantly under-developed. VALHUE aims to address this gap in the literature.