Physical therapy

Family medicine

Internal medicine

Oncology

Medicine

Journal of Clinical Oncology

173 Background: Symptom management is a cornerstone of quality oncology practice. ASCO established a Working Group to develop patient-reported outcome performance measures (PRO-PMs) for assessing symptom management. We describe multi-center testing funded by PCORI. Methods: Multi-stakeholder consensus and literature review identified 11 symptoms for testing as potential PRO-PMs. For these symptoms, questions from the NCI’s PRO-CTCAE tool were administered at 6 US academic and community oncology practices. Patients across cancer types completed questions electronically on days 5-15 of chemotherapy cycles. PRO-CTCAE mapped scores were dichotomized to delineate clinically meaningful thresholds (0-1 vs ≥2), and rates were tabulated between practices. Symptoms were selected to become PRO-PMs if clinically actionable and with prevalence ≥20%; between-practice variation was evaluated using χ 2 . Twelve candidate sociodemographic and clinical risk adjustment (RA) variables were evaluated via Akaike information criterion testing. Risk-adjusted PRO-PM rates were calculated using observed:expected ratios via generalized linear mixed modeling. Results: Among 653 enrolled patients, 607 (93%) completed questionnaires. Four of 11 symptoms met criteria for PRO-PM development: nausea, constipation, insomnia, pain. Four RA variables met inclusion criteria: age, gender, cancer type, insurance type. The Table shows raw and risk-adjusted rates of symptom burden (scores ≥2) for each PRO-PM across practices. Risk-adjustment yielded a modest impact on scores. Conclusions: Oncology PRO-PMs have been developed to quantify the burden of actionable symptoms at the practice level. Collection from patients is feasible. Further refinement is underway prior to submission for endorsement by the National Quality Forum. [Table: see text]

Development and testing of patient-reported outcome performance measures (PRO-PMs) for oncology practice.