When I first heard about Patient Reported Outcome Measures (PROM) I thought they were talking about pulse, blood pressure, weight, pain, anxiety. I didn’t start exploring further until 2012 when I was on the federal government’s Blue Button Initiative – clicking a button in your electronic medical record to download information from that record into human or machine readable form. I was on the Content Task Force. I cared about what information was to be downloaded. Based on comments I had received from you readers, I tried to get the Task Force to add what works and what doesn’t, when I’m scared or in pain. No luck, as if I was speaking Klingon. That started my exploration of PROM in England’s National Health Service. The National Quality Forum published a report in January 2013 about PROM. PROM’s have been developed for depression, pain, sleep, joint replacement. You can see an example on a Dartmouth web site called https://howsyourhealth.org/ where you can do a checkup of your general health and health risks.
PROM can be used for an individual or for populations, just like any research. For people, the challenges is having the chat with your primary care provider. Will they have time? Will they engage with you? For populations, the challenge is the methodology. Will everyone do it the same? Is it filled out only by people who have the knowledge, language, motivation to enter data? What about people who need their parent, neighbor, caregiver, child to fill it out? This is an exciting puzzle. I need to learn more.
