Patient Reported Outcomes Measures (PROMS)
At its meeting in January 2018, the NJR Steering Committee considered PROMs as an additional end-point for determining the outcomes of joint replacement surgery. It was decided that the NJR should look to either secure access to, or undertake additional collection of, PROMs data in order to enrich the understanding of outcomes following joint replacement. The committee would consider how any additional PROMs activity could be sustainably funded.
The NJR commenced regular six-month follow up of shoulder joint replacement patients in April 2017 for patients who had undergone surgery after 1st October 2016. Three year follow up will commence in October 2019. Patients who took part in the original pilot phase of shoulder PROMs were followed up at three and five years. The remaining five year follow ups will take place in 2021. Although the pre-operative PROMs (collected during pre-assessment and entered into the data entry system) remains lower than expected, the response rate for post-operative PROMs has averaged slightly over 80%.
In January 2018 the NJR was provided with PROMs data by NHS Digital, collected as part of the NHS England PROMs programme. This dataset, which has data up to 31 December 2016, will be analysed in 2018/19 and the results published.
Once the outcomes of the five year follow up from its hip and knee PROMs project has been analysed and assessed, the NJR Steering Committee will made a decision about whether to undertake another follow up, possibly at ten years, on the those patients from the original cohort of 50,000 that had not been lost to follow up.