Patient-reported Experience Measures: The Future of Middle East Patient Care
For a long time now, patients in the Middle East have taken a backseat in their healthcare journeys. While healthcare providers focused on delivering quality care, they often failed to include patients’ perspectives and experiences in their decisions. However, this is set to change with the rise of patient-reported experience measures (PREMs). PREMs are tools designed to understand patients’ experiences in a systematic and meaningful way. They are meant to change the way organizations understand and deliver care to patients.
Let's understand how patient-reported experience measures are changing patient care in the Middle East.
What is PREM?
Patient-reported experience measures are often used interchangeably with patient satisfaction surveys or outcomes. However, they are fundamentally different. Think of PREMs as tools that help capture the patient’s voice. They are more like structured feedback forms that document the first-hand experience of a patient while receiving care, focusing on the 'why’ and ‘how’ of their medical encounters.
Unlike patient satisfaction surveys, which allow people to score or evaluate their healthcare experience, PREMs are objective. For example, instead of asking “How satisfied were you with your waiting time?’’(a subjective analysis), PREMs would ask “How long did you wait before seeing your doctor?’’(an objective evaluation).
Source: Patient-reported outcome measures and patient-reported experience measures, BJA Education
The way PREMs collect data confers several advantages when compared to traditional satisfaction surveys. Typically PREMs ask about the frequency of certain events during care delivery rather than general impressions. For instance, a patient may be asked if they were involved in decision-making or given discharge information during their visit. PREMs often employ questions with options like ‘never’, ‘sometimes’, and ‘always’.
On the other hand, satisfaction surveys ask patients whether they agree or disagree with statements about their care, employing scales from ‘strongly disagree’ to ‘strongly agree’.
Such agreement-based scales have two key problems. First, most patients may instinctively agree with statements out of habit, rather than reflecting on their actual experience. Second, patients might give similar answers to consecutive questions without careful thought.
Thus, the data collected through PREMs is more practical and useful for providers looking to make substantial improvements in their service quality.
How Can PREMs Improve Patient Care?
PREMs are a critical component of patient-centered care. Some of the ways they can help in enhancing patient care are:
Integration into Clinical Workflows
PREMs are not mere standalone metrics but can be deeply integrated into clinical workflows. For instance, PREM data can be collected at multiple touchpoints in a patient’s journey and shared with care teams through integrated dashboards. This enables informed clinical decision-making by helping providers understand a patient’s pain points. Thus, making PREMs active components of care delivery.
Direct Patient Feedback
PREMs offer direct insights into patients’ healthcare experiences. This allows providers to pinpoint areas where communication or service delivery is lacking. For instance, patients may report long wait times compromising their experience, indicating the need for improvements in these areas.
Measurable Quality Improvement
With PREMs, you can collect and analyze patient experience data over time. This helps to track trends and measure the impact of quality improvement initiatives. Healthcare organizations implementing PREMs have reported up to 10% improvement in patient retention rates(NRR) and satisfaction.
Strategic Allocation of Resources
PREM data can help healthcare providers prioritize their investments in those areas that affect patient experience significantly. This ensures resources are directed toward improvements that patients truly value.
Strengthened Patient-provider Relationship
PREMs can help build trust between patients and healthcare providers by incorporating patient feedback in clinical decision-making. This has the potential to improve long-term health outcomes.
Enabling System-wide Transformation and Regulatory Advancement
The value of PREMs extends far beyond individual healthcare organizations. When implemented at a large scale across health systems, PREMs can drive how healthcare is delivered and regulated. Government health authorities and regulatory bodies in the Middle East can leverage PREM to develop patient-centric policies that address patient needs. This data-driven approach to healthcare regulation ensures that compliance requirements align with what truly matters to patients. Additionally, PREMs data support value-based care initiatives and enhance system efficiency.
Also Read: Patient-Centric Approaches: Elevating Engagement in Value-Based Models
Implementing PREMs: Challenges & Solutions
Healthcare organizations in the Middle East may face several challenges while implementing PREMs. Below are some of these challenges and how organizations can overcome them:
A Fancy Table
| Sr. No. | Challenge | Solution |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Traditional fee-for-service models don’t incentivize improvements in patient experiences. | Organizations should consider shifting to a value-based care model that rewards providers for improving patient experiences. |
| 2 | Initiatives focused on understanding patient experiences are often overshadowed by competing organizational priorities. | Organizations should integrate PREMs in strategic plans and link them directly to their core quality goals. |
| 3 | Existing data and analytics infrastructure lack the capabilities to capture and analyze patient experience data. | Organizations must invest in technology solutions that can integrate PREMs into existing workflows and minimize documentation burden. |
| 4 | Survey fatigue in patients can lead to low response rates and biased feedback. | Organizations must introduce brief surveys at optimal times in a patient’s care journey to maximize engagement. |
| 5 | Traditional surveys may not be able to capture the experiences of diverse patient populations. | Organizations must employ culturally adapted instruments to ensure that they are capturing feedback from diverse patient groups. |
Conclusion
In conclusion, there is more to Patient-Reported Experience Measures (PREMs) than just them being another set of surveys. By offering genuine and useful insights with the help of real patient experiences, they are revolutionizing Middle Eastern healthcare. Although implementing PREMs has its own set of difficulties, these can be solved by organizations with the correct tactics.
At the end of the day, when healthcare organizations truly listen to patients and use their feedback to shape care delivery, everyone benefits. Whether it’s patients receiving better care or providers building more efficient systems, PREMs can pave the way for more patient-centered healthcare in the Middle East.
To witness how Innovaccer’s solution is setting new standards for quality patient care, schedule a demo today.
References
- Bull, C., Teede, H., Watson, D., & Callander, E. J. (2022). Selecting and Implementing Patient-Reported Outcome and Experience Measures to assess health system performance. JAMA Health Forum, 3(4), e220326. https://doi.org/10.1001/jamahealthforum.2022.0326
- Charlotte Kingsley & Sanjiv Patel (2017). Patient-reported outcome measures and patient-reported experience measures, BJA Education, Volume 17, Issue 4, April 2017, Pages 137–144,
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