With the dawn of patient-centered care models came the recognition that patient experiences of pain, quality of life, and symptom relief are just as important as vital signs and other clinical observations recorded by the clinician. As such, more and more healthcare providers are capturing the patient voice (as it is often referred to) through standardized, industry-validated surveys known as patient reported outcomes measures (PROMs). These surveys help clinicians determine how patients are experiencing their own care journey. Historically, they have been challenging to collect on a large scale. Today, PatientIQ is at the forefront of PROMs data collection and analysis, fueling patient-reported insights across a wide variety of healthcare settings.
Understanding the application of PROMs
Matt Gitelis, CEO and Founder of PatientIQ, says that PROMs started in clinical trials. Now, he hears from customers that PROMs are a “key initiative” that clinicians and hospital executives know they need to implement. He anticipates they will become an even more “integral part of health care delivery.”
In clinical use, PROMs can be used to personalize treatment plans, to support evidence-based care decisions, and in the aggregate to objectively measure quality across a range of treatments and providers.
As an example of PROMs informing personalized care, Gitelis cites the relationship between mental health and recovery in total knee arthroplasties. Mental health surveys can be assigned to patients undergoing orthopedic surgery, so that providers may have insight into their patient’s anticipated recovery given their mental state. With this insight, the surgeon can tailor treatment plans to include mental health resources. Without that insight from PROMs, patients struggling with their mental health are less likely to receive the support they need to achieve a good outcome.
On the research side, PROMs can be leveraged within clinical studies to benchmark patient cohorts and identify patient trends. Within the context of a clinical trial, PROMs can measure how a treatment protocol or medical device impacts a patient’s quality of life, pain, ability to perform daily activities, and symptom relief. The insights afforded from PROMs can contribute to researchers determining whether a treatment protocol or medical device is effective.
PROMs are not always included in clinical trials because they are hard to collect and response rates are often disappointing. With the help of PatientIQ, the process is made much simpler. Now studies can be larger due to PatientIQ automating a lot of the data collection from both the patient and the EHR. In other words, PatientIQ has found a way to overcome these problems.
Maximizing efficiency and value
First, as Gitelis stresses more than once in this interview, the administration and collection of PROMs with the PatientIQ software is “100% automated.” This allows many more surveys to be sent out without administrative burden. Furthermore, thanks to “hundreds of thousands of lines of code,” the patient gets a survey that is appropriate to their medical condition and the stage they are at in treatment (for instance, pre-op or post-op), without clinical staff intervention.
Without a dedicated platform, Gitelis mentions that administering a survey is not simple. In addition to choosing the right survey for each patient, surveys should also automatically be sent in the patient’s preferred language.
Second, automation allows the survey to be sent “asynchronously” at the most appropriate time; medical teams don’t have to wait until the patient is in the clinic or hospital to collect patient-reported information.
PatientIQ also knows how to increase response rates. For instance, they don’t put too many questions in a survey, understanding the threshold for diminishing returns. The PatientIQ team has become experts in the PROM collection space, for example citing that, contrary to common expectations, patients in the 65-85 age range are the most likely to complete a PROM survey, whereas the 18-35 age range is least compliant.
Finally, PROMS are embedded in the EHR with PatientIQ so a clinician doesn’t have to use a different tool and take extra time to consider the data. “Bring the workflow to the clinician,” Gitelis says.
PatientIQ’s first product was ClinicalPRO, aimed at clinicians. They recently launched their second product, ResearchPRO, for clinical trials and other research. Gitelis says that ResearchPRO streamlines “end-to-end management” of clinical trials.
Watch the video for more insights on PROMs from Matt Gitelis from PatientIQ.
Learn more about PatientIQ: https://www.patientiq.io/
Listen and subscribe to the Healthcare IT Today Interviews Podcast to hear all the latest insights from experts in healthcare IT.
And for an exclusive look at our top stories, subscribe to our newsletter and YouTube.
Tell us what you think. Contact us here or on Twitter at @hcitoday. And if you’re interested in advertising with us, check out our various advertising packages and request our Media Kit.
PatientIQ is a proud sponsor of Healthcare Scene.
No comments:
Post a Comment