Top Things to Know: Advancing PAD Quality of Care and Outcomes Through Patient-Reported Health Status Assess

Published: October 13, 2022

  1. Peripheral artery disease (PAD) affects over 8.5 million individuals in the U.S. and significantly impacts their risk of cardiovascular events, including death.
  2. Most patients with PAD continue to live and experience impact on their day-to-day lives, including their functioning and quality of life, especially when individuals experience symptoms.
  3. PAD symptoms can range from pain while walking to ischemic rest pain, non-healing wounds, and gangrenous tissue, leading to amputations in the lower extremities.
  4. Managing cardiovascular risk and PAD symptoms are pillars of PAD chronic disease management and require a tailored and patient-centered approach.
  5. A way to capture experiences of PAD and treatment effects as seen from the patients’ perspective is the use of patient-reported outcomes measures (PROMs).
  6. PROMs for PAD have been used in the research setting so far to evaluate treatment effects or document the disease trajectories of patients.
  7. Spurred by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and the National Quality Forum, PROMs are increasingly being integrated into definitions of what it means to deliver patient-centered high-quality clinical care. Leveraging PROMs for performance evaluation is referred to as PRO-based performance measures (PRO-PMs).
  8. Using the National Quality Forum framework for PRO-PM development, this statement defines measurement goals for PAD care, offers an overview of the benefits of integrating PROMs assessment as part of the clinical care delivery, and provides a roadmap for the development of PRO-PMs in PAD for the advancement of quality of PAD care and outcomes.
  9. Health system requirements, competencies to administer and interpret PRO-PMs, and quality and ethical considerations for using PRO-PMs are discussed.
  10. This statement also offers four pilot test PRO-PMs for patients with symptomatic PAD (without critical limb ischemia).

Citation


Smolderen KG, Alabi O, Collins TC, Dennis B, Goodney PP, Mena-Hurtado C, Spertus JA, Decker C; on behalf of the American Heart Association Council on Peripheral Vascular Disease and Council on Lifestyle and Cardiometabolic Health. Advancing peripheral artery disease quality of care and outcomes through patient-reported health status assessment: a scientific statement from the American Heart Association [published online ahead of print] October 13, 2022. Circulation. doi: 10.1161/CIR.0000000000001105