Align ePROs with health system goals
Central to ePRO initiatives is patient care. Yet the data derived for patient care may support other goals for clinical care, quality improvement, and contractual obligations. Finding opportunities to align the use of PROMs for enhancing patient care with overall health system goals (see Figure 2A) supports the efficient use of IT resources while taking into account the various competing drivers and constraints in a health system environment.

At the core, ePROs should support patient care decisions, as well as illuminate other dimensions of care quality. For example, ePRO data for hip pain and function may provide the healthcare team insight on how a patient is progressing following a hip replacement. At the health system level, this same data may be reported to meet the needs of contractual obligations demonstrating performance achieved on patient-centered measures. In this context, the same measure aligns with both patient care and business operations for contractual reporting.
This priority-setting guideline aims to inform the initial stages of developing governance by identifying how to align the use of ePROs with different health system goals (for example, practice transformation or quality improvement). Key to this guideline is the involvement of stakeholders to prioritize the scope of resource and policy needs.