Hospitals Are Focusing on a New ‘Vital Sign’: How Patients Actually Feel
Summary
Hospitals are starting to use surveys called Patient-Reported Outcome Measures (PROMs) to better understand how patients feel after treatment. These surveys ask patients about their symptoms, pain, and quality of life to help doctors improve care beyond just clinical tests and scans.Key Facts
- PROMs are surveys where patients report their symptoms, pain, mobility, mental health, and quality of life before and after treatment.
- Hospitals like Mass General Brigham collect about 5 million PROMs each year and add the data to electronic health records.
- PROMs help doctors see problems that medical exams might miss, such as ongoing pain or difficulty moving.
- Dr. Andrea Pusic at Brigham and Women’s Hospital said PROMs act like a new vital sign for patient care.
- Patient feedback from PROMs can change how hospitals plan treatments, manage resources, and handle payment models that focus on quality.
- PROMs are becoming important in health systems that want to improve value-based care, which pays for better patient outcomes rather than just procedures.
- One example showed that breast reconstruction patients looked fine in exams but still had abdominal pain that PROMs revealed.
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