Value-based healthcare demands a data-informed approach to decision making at all levels, whether that is to support shared decision-making in the consultation, for quality improvement in a service, for resource allocation or for research.
A key aspect is the capture of patient reported outcomes. These structured and commonly codified questionnaires are important status reports about the symptom burden and quality of life of an individual on a given day. They can be an important tool to support care and therefore must be embedded technically across our healthcare information system to be accessed by patients and their clinicians in support of new models of care.
Welsh Government policy has clearly outlined the need to involve patients in decisions about their care, and that prudent health care principles and value-based healthcare will be the basis on which services are planned and delivered.
Embedding the right approach to gathering patient reported outcome measures (PROMs) is one vital component in aligning with the policies detailed in ‘A Healthier Wales’, ‘The National Clinical Framework’ and ‘The National Planning Framework 2022-2025’.
At the Welsh Value in Health Centre, we will be focussed on:
• Triangulating information – outcome, costing and process data together. This is so that we can understand what is happening in our system and find solutions to increase value for patients.
• Continuing to bring clinicians and analysts together to start answering some of the key questions affecting today’s NHS, so that we may become effective stewards of finite resources and improve outcomes at an individual and a population level. Leveraging good quality data. We are already addressing the digital and technical issues associated with the capture patient reported outcomes in direct care.
• Making data available in clinical systems and be able to be extracted and linked to other data for analysis in support of service improvement. This detailed work requires partnership working between the Welsh Value in Health Centre and our key partners to ensure a seamless approach to tackling all of the relevant issues including data standards, semantic interoperability and information governance.