Sharing PROMs With Patients is Unhelpful — or Worse
You can save time and satisfy patients by not discussing PROMs in the office
What’s the Claim?
A randomized trial in a busy foot and ankle practice found that when surgeons discussed patient-reported outcome measure scores (PROMs) with their patients, those patients were:
- Less likely to give their surgeon top scores for explaining things in ways patients could understand than if the surgeon did not discuss PROMs; in other words, these conversations were confusing to many patients.
- Less likely to get high scores for “activation” — a measure of how willing a patient is to take control of his or her own health — than those who never had the PROMs conversation at all.
Not exactly the desired effect.
