Dr Marcia Wilson Discusses the Patient's Role in Quality Measurements

Patient-reported outcomes are important and necessary measures that should be used more, as they give the patient a voice in terms of the quality of care they receive, said Marcia Wilson, PhD, MBA, senior vice president of quality measurement at The National Quality Forum.

Transcript (slightly modified)

What opportunities do you perceive for patients to be involved in quality measurements?

National Quality Forum operates on what we call a multi-stakeholder environment and what that means is we have everyone involved in healthcare around the table. It’s those people who give care, like physicians and nurses and pharmacists, is people who pay for care, like employers and health plans, but it’s also people who get care, like patients and consumers.

And at National Quality Forum, every voice is important. They all have a different perspective. They all care about different things and each voice needs to be heard particularly that voice of the patient. So at NQF, we always try to engage patients in the discussions about the measures that we’re reviewing so we hear what’s important for them.

Another place where that patient voice needs to be heard is there are measures that collect the voice of the patient. They’re called patient-reported outcomes and it means that patient tells you something about how well they’re functioning in everyday life, the quality of the life that they have, and hopefully that patient voice can encourage the development of more measures that include patient-reported outcomes so the patient’s voice can be magnified in terms of the quality of care that’s being provided.