Guidelines

Disseminate best practices for use and management

Governing bodies can establish guidance and policies that facilitate standards in ePRO design, use, and management at the clinic level. Standardization of ePRO functionality supports efficient management of resources and the ability to establish timelines and workflows for conducting projects. In turn, dissemination (or the targeted distribution of information and materials to a specific audience) serves to spread knowledge, lessons learned, and the associated best practices based on organization experience. This supports system-wide learning and advancement of ePRO implementation.

Strategy A
Promote successful ePRO use in practice

Continuous learning within the health system results when ePRO implementations are evaluated and shared across the organization. Over time, best practices may emerge allowing future efforts to expand ePRO use. Clinical teams implementing ePROs should be encouraged to document their experiences with expected plans for reporting back outcomes from work conducted. Processes followed, lessons learned, facilitators and barriers encountered, and outcomes evaluated during ePRO implementation will provide important insight to others considering similar endeavors.

Governing bodies can further support system learning by identifying or creating opportunities to share and discuss experiences. Opportunities may include the following:

  • highlight ePRO implementation experiences through internal communications (e.g., intranet, newsletter spotlights)
  • include ePRO team presentations during routine governance meetings
  • create quarterly ePRO discussion forums (e.g., learning forums, workshops, lunch & learn sessions) to focus on new or ongoing initiatives to advance the capture of patient-reported and patient generated health data in clinical practice  
  • include ePRO team presentations during system leadership meetings
  • publish results of ePRO implementations in peer-reviewed publications

Promoting successful ePRO experiences not only builds institutional knowledge, it also supports continued culture change concerning the importance of including the patient voice in practice.

Strategy B
Create shared resources to inform future ePRO implementations and use

Practice Consideration

Create an ePRO asset inventory and/or a catalog of ePROs supported by the health system that are available for use by clinical teams via ePRO tools.

Clinical teams benefit from understanding what resources are already available and accessible. Existing PROMs available for use within the health system, particularly those built into IT systems (i.e., EHR, patient portals, etc.) should be accessible for reference by teams interested in expanding data capture to include patient reported data. If available, workflow templates and training materials from previous implementations may also be repurposed or enhanced.

Strategy C
Establish a stakeholder feedback loop

Creating a feedback loop to stakeholders involved in ePRO implementation facilitates transparency and instills trust in the governance process, especially regarding how the input provided informs decisions and processes. Governance can provide opportunities for ongoing engagement, learning from others, and platforms to disseminate shared learnings or evidence generated from pilot studies. Synthesis of gathered feedback is best focused on the major functions that facilitate ePRO use and how these functions fit into the overall resources and processes.