Welcome to PROMs

“If quality is to be at the heart of everything we do, it must be understood from the perspective of the patient.” Next Stage Review (June 2008)

From 1st April 2009 providers of unilateral hip and knee replacements, groin hernia surgery and varicose vein surgery to NHS patients will be required to invite their patients to complete Patient Reported Outcome Measures (PROMs) questionnaires.

High Quality Care for All, the NHS Next Stage Review Final Report envisages putting quality at the heart of everything the NHS does. Particularly important is quality as assessed by patients themselves and the report highlights PROMs as a means of assessing effectiveness of care from the patients' perspective.

The purpose of this websites is to provide support and information to assist providers in implementing processes for collecting this data. The Department of Health Guidance on the routine collection of PROMs can be viewed here.

The NHS is being supported by contractors to deliver PROMs. The contract to run the national PROMs programme has been awarded by the Department of Health to Northgate Information Solutions.

Northgate Information Solutions runs the Hospital Episode Statistics system for the NHS, and has done so for many years. They also run the National Joint Registry for Hip and Knee Replacement Surgery and the Newborn Hearing Screening Programme.

Northgate has commissioned Quality Health to run the survey segment of the programme. Quality Health is a specialist health-only survey provider, which works for 320 NHS Trusts and is the largest survey provider to the NHS. They are an official contractor for the Healthcare Commission’s national survey programme. The PROMs Liaison Team is based at Quality Health.