John Appleby, the chief economist at the King’s Fund, announced the NHS is ignoring incredibly useful data which is cheap, relevant and easy to collect and sheds light on the NHS.
This data is known as proms. They are respected and provide useful information, however since their conceptualisation, their use has barely progressed at all according to Appleby.
The unique quality of proms is that they can instantly highlight care quality. Proms stands for ‘Patient Reported Outcome Measures’.
Proms work like this:
Before surgery, patients fill in a form explaining how they feel.
Then, after the operation, they fill them in again. Using their responses, who is good at getting patients to feel better can be determined.
Using proms, would make it unbelievably easy to observe whether quality of care has increased.