Patient-reported outcome measures and the evaluation of services

A growing consensus has emerged about patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs) as an important tool in the evaluation of services. There is little dispute regarding the range of relevant dimensions of health status, the types of measures available to capture what matters to patients, their required measurement properties and reporting standards when PROMs are used in studies. Their use on a large scale in the NHS national PROMs programme has produced valuable lessons about elective surgery but also about PROMs as tool. There are outstanding issues if PROMs are to be further applied in the evaluation of services. Patients need to be actively engaged. Health professionals need to see the merits of this approach to patient care and outcome assessment. PROMs need to be integrated into health records. Some recent initiatives have attempted to address these three needs, and further development and testing of such initiatives is needed.