Understanding the Use of Patient Reported Outcomes in Colorectal Cancer: Experience of a Canadian Hospital
Understanding the Use of Patient Reported Outcomes in Colorectal Cancer: Experience of a Canadian Hospital
A case study on the experiences of collecting patient-reported outcomes (PROs) in patients with colorectal cancer, at the Segal Cancer Centre at the Jewish General Hospital (JGH) in Canada.
Patient-reported outcomes (PROs) are direct reports from patients about their own health, quality of life, and/or functional status. They relate to healthcare services (routine or specialized) or treatments patients have received on their care trajectory.
When care teams use PROs, they facilitate patient-centred care and foster better engagement between patients and their healthcare team. On an organizational and system level, aggregation of PROs can support decision-making on services and patient trajectories or pathways. The implementation of PROs, a primary pillar of value-based healthcare (VBHC), is a significant organizational undertaking involving care teams, patients or population representatives, integrated information technology, and support services.
This case study aimed to improve the systematic collection and use of PROs, to support patient care and clinical experience. Firstly, the team assessed which of the ICHOM-recommended PROs for colorectal cancer were being collected at the JGH. It found that most clinically-relevant measures were documented and aggregated in the hospital databases, and whilst 75% (50 out of 67) ICHOM-recommended PROs were collected, these were recorded across different (non-integrated) databases. Secondly, healthcare providers were interviewed to understand the PROs being used in clinical practice, and attitudes towards measuring PROs. Healthcare providers reported using PROs in their practice and were generally very positive towards measuring PROs via standardized collection tools, as all answered that this was “very important” or “important”.
Improving the delivery of care to colorectal cancer patients using PROs can improve patients’ quality of life. These initial findings highlight specific areas for improvement towards standardizing the routine collection of PROs within this and other therapeutic areas. They also inform the JGH and other institutions in their approach to planning and monitoring the ongoing implementation of PROs. Other institutions can use a similar approach to identifying their baseline outcomes measurement as they embark on their own quality improvement endeavours to standardize and advance the collection and aggregation of PROs and to maximize their utilization to advance clinical excellence and patient engagement.
