Using Implementation Science to Evaluate the Implementation of Patient-Reported Outcome Measures (PROMs) in a Clinical Heart Failure Care Setting

Abstract

Background

Patients with heart failure (HF) can experience a poor quality-of-life (QOL), recurring hospitalizations, and progressive disease symptoms. Patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs) integrate patients’ voices into clinical care, by assessing patient symptoms, function, and QOL. In 2022, PROMs were incorporated into the electronic health record system (Epic) at a large academic hospital in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The purpose of this study was to use implementation-science frameworks to systematically evaluate the uptake and integration of PROMs into clinical HF care.

Methods

The Reach, Effectiveness, Adoption, Implementation, and Maintenance (RE-AIM) framework guided this mixed-methods, 1-year, quality-improvement project. Data sources included the following: clinician use of PROMs; patient-level data on completed PROMs; and semistructured interviews with clinicians. The PROM was the Kansas City Cardiomyopathy Questionnaire-12, which captures 4 domains related to HF—symptom frequency, physical limitations, social limitations, and QOL (KCCQ-12 is used as an example case of PROMs in general). Quantitative data were analyzed using descriptive statistics; qualitative data were analyzed using behaviour-change frameworks and latent content analysis.

Results

Over the course of 1 year, more patients were assigned to PROMs, a higher proportion of patients completed PROMs, and approximately 80% of patients had high scores on the questionnaire. Clinicians experience barriers—related to attention and decision processes, the environmental context, and their professional role—to integrating PROMs into practice. Suggested changes to improve PROM uptake include adding language licenses for PROM translations, reducing cognitive load for clinicians who are assigning and interpreting PROMs in the Epic system, and championing modelling of use of PROMs in practice.

Conclusions

This study demonstrates the benefit of using implementation science frameworks, to evaluate the implementation of PROMs in practice and provide actionable recommendations to health systems.