Keynoter Gary Gottlieb, M.D, President and CEO at Partners Healthcare told the attendees at Partners Healthcare Connected Health Symposium held in Boston on October 23-24 how very important it is to measure value outcomes relevant to each patient. As Dr. Gottlieb explained, “The healthcare system needs to use validated tools such as Patient-Reported Outcome Measures (PROMs) to compare outcomes across providers and institutions to see whether clinicians are actually improving the health of patients.”
It is important to have feedback from patients on their feelings about their physical, mental, social health, and functional status so they can know how to best deal with chronic diseases or conditions as they undergo treatments or procedures.
According to Dr. Gottlieb, “In the future, patient-reported measures are expected to play a more prominent role in assessing performance and determining the comparative effectiveness for different treatments. This will become very important as accountable care organizations will need to provide evidence that the care delivered has produced value for the patient as actually reported by the patient.”
He added, “It is important for patients reporting outcomes to have the next generation platform designed for all ages to make the reporting useful, thoughtful, efficient, and useful across the continuum of care.”
This example shows how important it is for doctors to communicate with each patient to obtain the correct information to produce the best outcomes. In one case, a man with multiple musculoskeletal complaints and experiencing pain was making very little progress since he was seen by a variety of specialists that weren’t communicating with each other and weren’t asking the right questions. Only when they began to communicate and take into consideration all of his health problems were they knowledgeable on how to initiate the appropriate treatment to help diminish his pain.
Another case shows how vital communication between the doctor and patient can be during an exam. A retired police officer in his mid-60s that has experienced bicuspid aortic valve problems since birth went to the doctor because he was experiencing chest pain. The doctors asked specific questions about chest pain, shortness of breath, and by asking the right questions, the doctors were able to accurately determine the extent of his chest pain.
The result was that after reviewing all of the data, the surgeons determined that the patient needed aortic stenosis surgery. The surgery is curative but only appropriate if you have symptoms. In this case, the operation was performed and the patient no longer experiences chest pain.