5 Ways Patient-Reported Outcomes Improve Your Organization

5 Ways Patient-Reported Outcomes (PROs) Create Value for Your Organization

As healthcare shifts from quantity to quality, providers continue to look for more ways to evaluate value. Episode-of-care cost data has been very helpful in learning ways to cut costs and improve care for the short term. However, only following up within the 30 or 90-day episodes of care is not sufficient to assess the long-term benefits of interventions.

Functional long-term Patient-Reported Outcomes (PROs) provide researchers with tools to quantify the benefits of changing patient care procedures. Better Value in Health Care Requires Focusing on Outcomes from Harvard Business Review defines five ways outcomes are helping providers navigate the transition to truly providing value:

1. Outcomes define the goal of the organization and set a direction for its differentiation. “Providers commonly cite quality, research, or education as goals, but few measure their patients’ treatment outcomes or report them – either to their clinicians or the public.”

2. Outcomes inform the composition of integrated care teams. “Data that exposes poor performance, in particular, can be a strong motivator to join together to improve.”

3. Outcomes motivate clinicians to compare their performance and learn from each other. “A more comprehensive focus on processes and outcomes and their interaction always shows opportunities to improve, from increasing survival rates and long-term functioning to reducing complications and speeding recovery.”

4. Outcomes highlight value-enhancing cost reduction. “Getting costs under control requires engaging clinicians with data that can help them understand which activities and services can be reduced or eliminated without compromising outcomes.”

5. Outcomes enable payment to shift from volume to results. “As payment transitions from a fee-for-service world to a value-based world, good outcomes are shifting from a lofty idea into a business imperative.”