Health-Related Quality of Life (HRQoL)

Question 1

Define Health-Related quality of Life.

Answer 1

Quality of life in clinical medicine represents the functional effect of an illness and its consequent therapy upon a patient, as perceived by the patient.

Question 2

Why should we measure health?

Answer 2

To have an indication of the need for health care
To target resources where they are most needed
To assess the effectiveness of health interventions
To evaluate the quality of health services
To use evaluations of effectiveness to get better value for money
To monitor patients’ progress

Question 3

What are commonly used measures of health?

Answer 3

Mortality

Morbidity

Patient-based outcomes

Question 4

Tell me about mortality as a use of measuring health

Answer 4

Easily defined
But not always recorder accurately
Not a very good way of assessing outcomes and quality of care

Question 5

Tell me about morbidity as a use of measuring health

Answer 5

Routinely collected e.g. disease registers, hospital episode statistics
Collection not always accurate
Tells us nothing about patients’ experiences
Not always easy to use in evaluation

Question 6

Tell me about patient-based outcomes as a use of measuring health

Answer 6

Attempt to assess well-being from the patient’s point of view
Examples: HRQoL, health status, functional abilities
Patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs) are measures of health that come directly from patients
They work by comparing scores before and after treatment or over longer-periods

Question 7

Why should we use patient-based outcomes?

Answer 7

Increase in conditions where aim is managing rather that curing
Biomedical tests just one part of the picture
Need to focus on patient’s concerns (patient centred care)
Need to pay attention to iatrogenic effects of care

Question 8

How can patient-based outcomes be used?

Answer 8

Clinically
To assess benefits in relation to cost
In clinical audit
To measure health status of populations
To compare interventions ion a clinical trial
As a measure of service quality