Episode 15 - Quality Metrics and Patient-Reported Outcomes

During this segment, Peter Salgo, MD; Ira M. Klein, MD, MBA, FACP; Michael Kolodziej, MD; and Bryan Loy, MD, discuss appropriate settings for conducting clinical studies that can help evaluate quality metrics and improve patient care, and describe challenges related to the use of patient-reported outcomes in medical oncology.

Dr Loy explains that both academic and nonacademic institutions can play an important role in research and provide valuable information regarding outcomes and variations. Although the site of care often impacts the ability to deploy metrics, receive data on metrics, and then discuss the results, having consensus among all stakeholders regarding the metrics to be evaluated is more important to improving quality than the site of care, adds Dr Klein.

Furthermore, Dr Klein comments that the usefulness of patient-reported outcomes has yet to be determined in medical oncology and suggests that the information collected from these surveys should be used with caution.

Dr Kolodziej notes that patient-reported outcomes information is currently reported in aggregate, and remarks that a methodological approach that allows individual-level reporting needs to be established to link the patient-reported outcomes information with other clinical factors including clinical outcomes.