Quality of life research : an international journal of quality of life aspects of treatment, care and rehabilitation
-
Patient experiences with symptom care need to be assessed and documented to ensure successful management of cancer-related symptoms. This paper details one method for creating symptom management quality improvement (SMQI) reports, including case-mix adjustment of patient-reported measures. Qualitative data regarding the acceptability of these reports at participating cancer centers (CCs) are also provided. ⋯ This paper provides one method for creating hospital-level SMQI reports, including case-mix adjustment. Variation between CCs on key quality indicators, even after adjustment, suggested room for improvement. SMQI reports based on patient-reported data can inform and motivate efforts to improve care through professional/patient education and applying standards of care.
-
To help address wait times for elective surgery, British Columbia has implemented a triaging system that assigns priority levels to patients based on their diagnoses. The extent to which these priority levels concords with patients' assessment of their health status is not known. The purpose of this study was to measure the association between the priority levels assigned to patients and their patient-reported outcomes data collected at the time of being enrolled on the surgical wait list. ⋯ This study observed no relationship between patients' self-reported health status and their assigned priority level for elective surgery. A more patient-centered approach to triaging patients for surgical treatment would incorporate patients' perspective in surgical wait list prioritization systems.
-
Individualized quality of life (QoL) measures differ from traditional inventories in that QoL domains/weights are not predetermined, but identified by the individual. We assessed practicability of the Schedule for the Evaluation of Individual QoL-Direct Weighting (SEIQoL-DW) interview in severely affected multiple sclerosis (MS) patients; the key QoL dimensions identified; and the correlation of the SEIQoL-DW index score with standard patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs). ⋯ Individualized QoL can be assessed in severely affected MS patients, providing information that is not tracked by the standard inventories Core-POS, POS-S-MS, EQ-5D-3L, and HADS.