Down the rabbit hole on evidence-based medicine and client-reported outcome measures (CROMs)... 🐇
I was doing some research for a paper Emily M. Tincher, DVM and I are writing and, as usual, ended up neck deep in some non-veterinary topics... then something just jumps off the page 📃 as being so relevant and prescient to where we, as veterinary medicine, are today.
Some of you know I have a bee in my bonnet 🐝 about CROMs - most simplistically, our ability to measure pet health outcomes (especially around quality of life) by asking the client to respond to a short survey ❓ post-visit and/or on an ongoing basis. (It's not quite *that* simple, obviously, but you get the idea!)
I went on a bit of a mission at WVC last week, wandering around the vendors who enable client communication, either through PIMS or as an add-on. I wanted to know how many have structured client follow-up communications as standard, especially with any kind of outcome measure. 💻
How many of them? Based on what I was told - none. 😶
The reason they gave? Practices, by and large, are not asking for it.
As we're working on more spectrum of care research (including the role that CROMs could play), the conclusion of this paper struck me. It's talking about human healthcare, where they are with patient-oriented research. and where they can go, but it felt so true about where we are as well. We have an opportunity to do it better in #vetmed. For sure it will require work and coordination, but it's absolutely "the right thing to do" and would result in a huge payoff in *so* many ways for pet families, pets, veterinary healthcare teams, and industry partners.
A quick example: asking clients for outcome measures isn't a passive mechanism - it actually increases their engagement in their pet's healthcare journey and has the potential to improve outcomes in and of itself! 🎯
Tip of the iceberg on this! 💡
Shoutout to folks I know who are deep into this already Molly McAllister, DVM, MPH Jennifer Welser, DVM, DACVO Jonathan Lustgarten, MS, PhD, VMD, CSPO David Kincaid Dan O'Neill
Aubin D, Hebert M, Eurich D. The importance of measuring the impact of patient-oriented research. CMAJ. (2019) https://lnkd.in/gYKkGKmD
Extra credit - Prof Innes' Today's Veterinary Practice article from last year on CROMs: https://lnkd.in/gujHmvY9
#evidencebasedmedicine #spectrumofcare
We're so inspired by the work you all do!