Dr Patty Taddei-Allen: Feedback From Patient-Reported Outcomes Can Help Achieve Better Quality of Life

Understanding patient-reported outcomes in disease states enhances our ability to provide patients with better care and an increased quality of life, said Patty Taddei-Allen, PharmD, MBA, BCACP, BCGP, director of outcomes research, WelldyneRx.

Transcript

Are there certain disease states where patient-reported outcomes and real-world evidence are becoming more commonly used?

So, one of the first kind of disease categories where we’re seeing a lot of patient-reported outcomes being obtained in clinical practices, as well as from a managed care perspective, is in oncology patients. We want to see how patients are doing, as far as from their disease state, and are these drugs improving their quality of life, as well as helping with the disease. Other areas where patient-reported outcomes have a lot of potential and are currently being used is in the mental health space, in order to be able to identify when maybe there might need to be a change in therapy if there’s a correlation of a decrease in quality of life.

Also, MS [multiple sclerosis] is another area where we’re using a lot of quality of life outcomes. MS is a disease state that is very highly associated with disability, and by improving quality of life, that’s one of the main goals in treating patients with MS.

How are patient-reported outcomes being obtained?

So, obtaining patient-reported outcomes—there’s a wide spectrum of different types of patient-reported outcomes. There are validated surveys out there. There are some that are disease generic, and so you may use these patient-reported outcomes in different disease states. There are other patient-reported outcomes that are validated that are specific to a disease state. So, it depends on what practice works best in their workflow, or what will work best in the managed care or whatever setting you’re in, to be able to incorporate these different types of patient-reported outcomes to see how patients are responding to their therapy.