Improving Patient Reported Outcome Measure Collection Through Increased Patient Outreaches: Utilization of a Return-to-Work Program.

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Patient reported outcome (PRO) measures are a critical tool to understand the patient's experience of their illness. Our institution collects PRO measures for patients receiving spine care through several modalities, including direct patient outreaches. We designed a quality project to increase the total number of patient outreaches within 1 year, without increasing program resources or costs, by utilizing a return-to-work program. Spine PRO collection rate data was extracted from the electronic health record by a data science analyst. This data included how many direct patient outreaches were completed each month and the average number of patient outreaches being completed by the patient outreach representative. For the balancing measure, full-time equivalent costs were monitored throughout the baseline and pilot periods. During the 6-month baseline period, 3477 patient outreaches were made, representing 14.5% of possible outreaches. During the first 3-month post-intervention remeasure period, 6272 patient outreaches were made, an increase of 55.44%. During the second 3-month post-intervention period, 9099 outreaches were made, an increase of 38.21% from the first remeasure. There was no increase in cost to the program related to the project. This increase in patient outreaches by return-to-work employees will translate to improvement in overall PRO collection rates, which may ultimately improve individual and population health care delivery.