Quality improvement in the NHS.

Refinement of current reforms is needed through a new national strateg

Diagnostic sensitivity and false positive AKI alerts through unlinking of an integrated Grampian biochemistry service

ReportPublisher PD

Retrospectively patient-reported pre-event health status showed strong association and agreement with contemporaneous reports.

OBJECTIVE: The unpredictability of the occurrence of illnesses and injuries leading to most emergency admissions to hospital makes it impossible prospectively to collect preadmission patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs). Our aims were to review the evidence for using retrospective PROMs to determine pre-event health status and the validity of using general population norms instead of retrospective PROMs. STUDY DESIGN AND SETTING: Searches of Medline, PsycINFO, Embase, Global Health, and Health Management information. Six studies met the inclusion criteria for the first aim, and 11 studies addressed the second aim. Narrative syntheses were conducted. RESULTS: Strong associations were found between retrospective and contemporary PROMs in 21 of 30 comparisons (correlation coefficients over 0.68) and 20 of 24 showed strong agreement for continuous measures (intraclass correlations over 0.75). Categorical measures revealed only fair to moderate levels of agreement (kappa 0.3-0.6). Associations were stronger for indices than for individual items and for shorter time intervals. The direction of differences was inconsistent. Retrospective PROMs reported by elderly patients were similar to the general population but younger adults had been healthier. CONCLUSION: Retrospective collection offers a means of assessing PROMs in unexpected emergency admissions. However, further research is needed to establish the best policy for their use

Relationship between patient reported experience (PREMs) and patient reported outcomes (PROMs) in elective surgery.

OBJECTIVE: Our aim was to see if the reporting of better experiences by elective surgical patients was associated with better outcomes (effectiveness and safety). The objectives were to: describe the distribution of experience scores and any association with patients' characteristics; determine the relationship of experience with effectiveness and with safety; and explore the influence of patient characteristics, year and provider on the relationship between experience and effectiveness. METHODS: Patients undergoing one of three procedures from 2010 to 2012 in England who completed a patient reported outcome measure (PROM) questionnaire before and after surgery and a patient reported experience measure (PREM) questionnaire. Data on 4089 hip replacement patients, 4501 knee replacements and 1793 groin hernia repairs. Regression analysis was used to examine associations between disease-specific and generic PROMs and PREMs. RESULTS: There was a weak positive association between experience and effectiveness for all three procedures (correlation coefficient with disease-specific PROMs for hip and knee replacements 0.2 and with EQ-5D 0.1 for all three procedures). The aspect of experience most strongly associated with a better outcome was the level of communication with and trust in their doctor. A higher experience score of 1 SD (about 1.5 on a 10-point scale) was associated with about 30% less likelihood of the patient reporting a complication. There was no difference between the eight dimensions of experience. All the relationships observed were consistent over time, between different types of patients (age, sex, socioeconomic status) and between providers. CONCLUSIONS: Patients distinguish between the three domains of quality when reporting their experience and outcome. If the weak positive associations between domains were shown to be causal, there would be implications for maximising performance measures for providers

Agreement between retrospectively and contemporaneously collected patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs) in hip and knee replacement patients.

PURPOSE: To investigate the relationship between retrospectively and contemporaneously collected patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs) and the influence on this relationship of patients' age and socio-economic status and the length of time. METHODS: Patients undergoing hip or knee replacement in four hospitals who had completed a pre-operative questionnaire were invited to recall their pre-operative health status shortly after surgery. The questionnaires included a disease-specific (Oxford Hip Score; Oxford Knee Score) and generic (EQ-5D-3L) PROM. Consistency and absolute agreement between contemporary and retrospective reports were investigated using intraclass correlations (ICCs). Differences were visualised using Bland-Altman plots. Linear regression analysis explored whether retrospective can predict contemporary PROMs. RESULTS: Patients' recalled health statuses were similar to their contemporaneous reports, with no significant systematic bias. Absolute agreement for disease-specific PROMs was very strong (ICC 0.82) and stronger than for the generic PROM (ICC 0.60, 0.62). Agreement was consistently strong across the range of severity of a patient's condition, age and socio-economic status. Patients' age and socio-economic status had no significant influence on size of difference and direction of recall, although reliability of recall was slightly worse among the over-75s versus under-60s for hips (Oxford Hip Score ICC 0.88 vs. 0.78). Mean retrospective PROMs for groups or populations of patients can reliably predict what mean contemporary reports of PROMs would have been. CONCLUSION: Retrospective PROMs can be used to obtain a baseline assessment of health status when contemporary collection is not feasible or cost effective. Research is needed to determine the feasibility of retrospective PROMs in emergency admissions

Developing clinical guidelines: a challenge to current methods.

Current methods for producing clinical guidelines are cumbersome and not always reliable. Could a more streamlined approach improve coverage and make decisions more transparent