The NHS PROMs programme measures health gain in patients undergoing hip replacement, knee replacement, varicose vein and groin hernia surgery in England, based on patient responses to questionnaires before and after surgery. These typically short, self-completed questionnaires are measures of a patient’s health status or health-related quality of life at a single point in time. The NEQOS report compares Trust performance on PROMs against others in the North East and North Cumbria, as well as the national average.
In keeping with other NEQOS reports, the PROMs reports use funnel charts to help the subscriber take account of both the size of the effect and the size of the patient population under study. These methods are also used to identify outliers.
Our report focuses on five key areas of analysis:
- Participation and completeness of local data that has been used for reporting patients’ outcomes. This potentially helps subscribers to improve their completeness of PROMs data in subsequent collections by highlighting variations to date.
- Comparison between regional providers on the severity of preoperative symptoms.
- Comparison between regional providers in the change in Patient-Reported Outcomes after surgery compared to before surgery (‘Health Gain’).
- Any changes in the above over time.
- The statistical and clinical significance of the observed differences.
Figure: Completeness of PROMs data collection for varicose vein procedures compared to national rates
NEQOS is currently undertaking a more detailed analysis of the groin hernia repair data which will be included in future PROMs reports. Simultaneously, NEQOS also release a Best Practice Tariff (BPT) report advising subscribers if they are likely to receive BPT funding based on their performance. There have been direct impacts on clinical practice of the PROMs reports in our subscribing Trusts over the years of its production and have been published at a national conference.
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