‘Focused on What Matters to Patients’: Vanderbilt PROMS Team Wins International Award

Congratulations to the Vanderbilt Patient Reported Outcome Measures System (VPROMS) team for winning the 2022 Value-Based HealthCare Primary Care Award. The team—Justin Bachmann, MD, MPH,  VUMC Assistant Professor of Medicine and Biomedical Informatics and Medical Director for Patient-Reported Outcomes Measurement; Reagan Buie, MHA, PMP, Senior Project Manager, Episodes of Care; and Emily Burnell, Manager, Episodes of Care—recently traveled to Castle Amerongen in the Netherlands to accept the prestigious international award.

Though VUMC has long been an international leader in personalized medicine, the enterprise sought to expand that definition by measuring outcomes of greatest interest to patients. In 2018, VPROMS began as an initiative to make such patient-reported outcomes a routine part of clinical care at VUMC. By seamlessly integrating PROMs into the electronic health record, the team makes these outcomes available to patients and clinicians during real-time clinical care as well as for quality improvement and research endeavors.

Using stakeholder engagement data, VPROMS implemented three successful pilot clinics in the areas of inflammatory bowel disease, prostate cancer and pediatric asthma. After the initial success with the pilot program, the VPROMs team successfully set up PROMS in at least one clinic in every Patient Care Center—more than 30 clinical sites and almost 200,000 patients—by September 2021.

For the VBHC Prize the team submitted a written application and video pitch and gave a series of two-minute pitches during the competition. From around 135 applications, the committee selected Dental Health Services Australia the VBHC Prize winner and gave several excellence awards, including the VBHC Primary Care Award won by VPROMS.

The Vanderbilt PROMS team (left to right): Reagan Buie, MHA, PMP, Senior Project Manager, Episodes of Care; Emily Burnell, Manager, Episodes of Care; and Justin Bachmann, MD, MPH, VUMC Assistant Professor of Medicine and Biomedical Informatics and Medical Director for Patient-Reported Outcomes Measurement