Norah Crossnohere, PhD, is helping healthcare providers incorporate patient-reported outcomes (PROs) into their clinical practices.
“PROs give patients the ability to provide additional information to their providers regarding how they feel and function in their daily life,” said Dr. Crossnohere, an Assistant Professor in the General Internal Medicine Division who specializes in the study of PROs. “PROs collected during routine care can not only lead to enhanced provider-patient communication, but also can increase efficiency and improve healthcare outcomes that matter to patients.”
“In collaboration with members of the PROTEUS Consortium, we developed a framework and user’s guide to make it easier for healthcare providers and systems to incorporate PROs into their practice by addressing what should be considered when designing, implementing and managing such systems,” she added.
The PROTEUS Consortium (Patient-Reported Outcomes Tools: Engaging Users and Stakeholders) includes more than 50 patient, clinician, health system, research, government, and regulatory groups who help navigate the use of PROs in clinical trials and clinical practices in the US and internationally. Dr. Crossnohere is the Sr. Project Scientist of PROTEUS, and Dr. Anne Schuster, a research scientist in the College of Medicine, is also involved as a Project Scientist.More information about how to use PROs in care can be found online in a Nature Medicine commentary led by Dr. Crossnohere titled "A framework for implementing patient-reported outcomes in clinical care: the PROTEUS-practice guide." In addition, the full “PROTEUS Guide to Implementing Patient-Reported Outcomes in Clinical Practice: A Synthesis of Resources” is available on the PROTEUS website. The framework and user’s guide have already begun to be recognized and widely used, including having been cited in the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services draft Patient Reported Outcomes Guide for its Enhancing Oncology Model.