Patient Reported Measures

The Patient Reported Measures (PRMs) Program is part of the NSW Health Integrated Care strategy.  The program aims to 'enable patients to provide direct, timely feedback about their health related outcomes and experiences to drive improvement and integration of healthcare across NSW'.

The Agency for Clinical Innovation is leading the development, implementation and sustainability of the Patient Reported Measures Program. The program will endeavour to reduce the burden on clinicians and patients and add value to their interactions.

Patient Reported Measures can be broken into two categories:

Patient Reported Outcome Measures (PROMs) capture patients’ perspectives on how illness or care impact their health and wellbeing. Standardised and validated tools measure patient outcomes, including quality of life or symptoms related to a specific disease or condition. This information can be used for care planning and decision-making, to provide timely person-centred care and ensure referrals are appropriate and based on identified patient needs.

Patient Reported Experience Measures (PREMs) assess the patient’s experience and perception of their healthcare. Patients complete these questionnaires anonymously. The information provides an overview of patients experience of care in real-time to inform local service improvement and enable a more rapid response to identified issues.

Key summaries from the literature demonstrate the following findings.

  • Patients engaged in their healthcare tend to experience better outcomes, and choose less costly interventions. For example, they might select physical therapy for low back pain after they participate in a process of shared decision-making.
  • Measuring and using patient reported outcomes allows for better communication and shared decision-making between patients and providers.
  • Measuring patient reported outcomes is important. Conventionally measured biomarkers (such as haemoglobin A1c for diabetes) often fail to correspond to how a patient is actually feeling.
  • Systematically collected patient reported outcome data better reflects underlying health status than clinical reporting, and also predicts meaningful clinical outcomes, including survival.

Contact

Melissa Tinsley
Patient Reported Measures Program Manager
Phone: 02 9464 4649 or +61 475 960 036
Email: melissa.tinsley@health.nsw.gov.au
Website: www.aci.health.nsw.gov.au/make-it-happen/prms