Dr. Judy Baumhauer: Implementing and Interpreting Patient Reported Outcomes

RUSK Insights on Rehabilitation Medicine

Dr. Baumhauer is a tenured Professor and serves as the Senior Associate Dean of Academic Affairs for the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry. She also is the Associate Chair of Academic Affairs within the Department of Orthopaedics at the University of Rochester. In addition to providing clinical care and performing surgery, she holds the position as the Director of the Clinical Health Informatics Core for the UR Healthcare System and is a board of director of Accountable Health Partners, ACO for the Rochester Region. She received her Doctorate of Medicine from the University of Vermont College of Medicine. She completed orthopaedic residency at the Medical Center Hospital of Vermont and a Fellowship in Foot and Ankle Surgery at the Medical College of Wisconsin. She also completed a Masters in Public Health degree from the University of Rochester. Dr. Baumhauer is the past president of the American Board of Orthopaedic Surgery, American Orthopaedic Foot and Ankle Society (AOFAS), and Eastern Orthopaedic Association. She currently is the President of the Patient-Reported Outcomes Measurement Information System (PROMIS) Health Organization and has published over two hundred peer reviewed papers and book chapters.

Part 1: Data are needed to help understand how a patient is feeling and functioning to implement preventive health strategies, maximize healthy behaviors, assess their treatment response, and understand how health care resources are being allocated. Dr. Baumhauer defined a patient reported outcome as information directly reported by the patient who experiences it and is not interpreted as when we usually obtain some health history and tell it in our terms and report it into the patient’s note. She provided examples of the disconnect between what is important to the patient and what the clinician believes is important for the patient. A validated number can be placed on how the patient is feeling and functioning. It is important that a validated instrument be used that is quick and does not hold up the clinician. At the University of Rochester, they landed on the use of PROMIS (Patient-Reported Outcomes Measurement Information System) on a custom platform called UR VOICE (Validated Outcomes in Clinical Experience). They collect the same information for each patient. They try to ask the right questions when the information is needed most. The aim is to be domain specific, such as symptom-based, using the core package of pain, physical function, and depression rather than focusing on various diseases. Depending on the medical specialty, the symptoms emphasized can be different. Compared to SF-36, PROMIS is a better measure since it is more responsive to change.