The Partners PROMs team. Photo credit: Josie Elias

Last month, members of BWHC, MGH and other institutions across Partners HealthCare came together for the first Partners Patient Reported Outcome Measures (PROMs) Summit. As a national leader in PROMs, Partners invited BWHC’s pioneering PROMs clinical leaders William Gormley, MD, MPH, Neil Martin, MD, MPH, Timothy Smith, MD, PhD, MPH, and others to share the important PROMs work their departments are doing. PROMs Medical Director Neil Wagle, MD, MBA, hosted the summit, and Partners Chief Clinical Officer Gregg Meyer, MD, and Chief Quality and Safety Officer Tom Sequist, MD, MPH, presented the event keynote.

PROMs measure some of the outcomes that matter most to patients, including improvements in back pain for a Neurosurgery patient or side effects, such as nausea, for a Radiation Oncology patient.

The collection of PROMS first rolled out across Partners in 2012 and has rapidly expanded in the years since, including at BWH. Patients answer a set of validated questions on an iPad or using Partners Patient Gateway before their appointments and at pre-determined intervals. Teams of clinicians glean a great deal of insight about their patients and how to improve their care through the collection and analysis of these vast and detailed data.

“Nothing matches the breadth, technical expertise and sophistication of Partners’ PROMs,” said Wagle at the summit.

Outcomes that matter to patients include such things as whether the patient can climb up a flight of stairs without feeling pain, get dressed without becoming short of breath or feel well enough to go out and socialize.

Added Smith: “The more data we collect, the more information we have about each patient and the better we can provide their care.”