Pulse Check: Patient Reported Insights
The Saskatchewan Health Authority (SHA) has committed to a move to collecting People-Centred Measures at the individual, unit or program and system levels. At the individual level, this gives care providers information necessary to better understand a patient’s condition and treatment progress and can be shared at appointments between the patient and care provider to promote a shared care planning process. At the unit or program level, this information can provide a better understanding of the population being served, potential areas for improvements, insights into possible solutions and support health system planning and care delivery. At the system level, information used at the individual and unit or program levels can be “rolled up” and provide an overview of overall population health, system functioning and provide a basis for benchmarking relative to other jurisdictions.
People-Centred Measurement includes Patient Reported Experience Measures (PREMs), Patient Reported Outcome Measures (PROMs) and qualitative ways of hearing the voice of people such as through open ended questioning or listening to them speak about their experience. PCM methods include but are not limited to:
- Patient Reported Experience Measures (PREMs) - standardized tools that enable people to provide feedback on their experience of service provided. PREMs provide insight into experiential aspects of care delivery and patient-centred care.
- Patient Reported Outcome Measures (PROMs) - standardized, validated instruments that are completed by people to measure their health and well-being. PROMs provide information on peoples’ self assessment of their health status that is relevant to how they define their quality of life, including symptoms, functionality, and physical, mental & social health. PROMs are important to understand where health care services and procedures make a difference to people’s health and well-being.
- Narrative and storytelling - processes that allow people to use their own words to describe their experiences or challenges accessing care as well as their health and quality of life. It deepens understanding by inviting people to share using methods that can feel safe and more inclusive. This method can help describe data that is personalized to individuals leading to decisions based on people rather than statistics. One area that the SHA aims to collect data in is the Saskatchewan Health networks. Health Networks connect teams of health-care professionals and community partners to better meet the needs of the people they serve. Health-care professionals who play an important role on a team include physicians, nurses, pharmacists, physiotherapists, dietitians, mental health counsellors, social workers, and others.
One area where the SHA would like to begin collecting People-Centred Measures is in the province’s health networks. Health Networks allow the Saskatchewan Health Authority to better organize services and resources internally to deliver more reliable and consistent team‐based care as close to home as possible. Health services within networks will be adapted to the needs of individuals and communities. For example, populations showing greater incidence of certain chronic conditions such as COPD or diabetes could have enhanced provider and program support in their network. This can help in reducing unnecessary visits to Emergency Rooms, reduced hospitalizations and more appropriate access to care for all. Reduction in the number of unnecessary ER visits also translates into shorter waits for users who do need to access an ER, and reductions in ER revisits, as care is provided in the network setting.
Before measures were collected across all of the province’s Health Networks, work was done to trial the collection of this data in five networks. These include Northwest 5 (Spiritwood Area), Northwest 6 (North Battleford Area), Saskatoon West, Saskatoon South and Southeast 8 (Weyburn Area). The team working to trial this data collection included specialists from the Program Support and Development Team, specialists from the Strategy and Innovation team, directors and staff from participating Health Networks, Patient and Family Partners from participating Health Networks, academic researchers from the University of Saskatchewan and a representative from the Saskatchewan Medical Association (SMA).
The documents presented show the most common themes that we heard from patients in each network.