Dive Brief:
- The California Joint Replacement Registry has published and reported the first data from its registry, revealing the first patient reported outcomes from a project that started in 2010.
- The data does not analyze complication rates or re-admission rates, but reveals what patients thought of their treatment and recovery after filling out detailed surveys. CJRR found that between 83.4% and 88% of patients reported positive outcomes from their joint replacement surgeries, depending on the hospital in which they were treated.
- "This release, a significant milestone, marks the first time an orthopedic registry in the United States has publicly published such data by hospital," the CJRR said in a statement. "The CJRR hopes this release will serve to further the national dialogue around PROs and the importance of seeking and sharing direct feedback from patients about healthcare outcomes."
Dive Insight:
Patient surveys are part of the ongoing evolution of the HHS policy to reform Medicare reimbursements to a value-based model, which has a 2018 deadline to have 50% of payments calculated on a value-based metric. While the data on the CJRR site is spotty, and only a few of the hospitals had any statistically significant findings to report, this survey is an important step in getting everyone in the industry on the same page regarding patient-reported outcomes.
It's also an indication of just how far the industry has to go with regard to finding reliable, reproducible and sustainable methods by which they can get meaningful information from patients about their healthcare experiences. If the 2018 deadline holds firm—and nothing about the HHS' treatment of deadlines would suggest that it will—there is scant time left to develop proper models and executions of patient surveys for use in a value-based calculation of medical care.