In the Foot and Ankle Unit Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital, you will be asked to help us gather information about your symptoms, your presenting condition, any medical problems you might suffer from and how you respond to treatments you receive (outcome measures). By analysing this data, it helps us maintain our extremely high standards of care, and provide you with the very best treatments available.
Measuring your treatment
Outcome Measures
Clinical outcomes are the measures that we use to assess the change in health likely to be due to a given treatment. outcomes are measured by examining the impact treatment has on important factors that affect your quality of life, such as changes in pain and ability to carry out various activities.
We measure your outcomes by collecting information before and after treatment. This information is put into context by also collecting details about your general health, demographics and activity levels. At the Royal National Orthopaedic hospital in Stanmore, we have have invested a great deal into measuring patient specific data on all of our patients for the last 6 years, we have a dedicated data collection officer and use a specifically designed system called the ‘POD’ , which helps us to provide treatment that is tailored specifically to your needs.
Unless we systematically measure clinical outcomes we cannot be sure what effect our treatments have on you. POD allows us to constantly audit and evaluate the treatment we give and to determine the standard of care we provide. It will help us identify any problems or undue complications, which we can then act on to prevent in future.
In the long term evaluating the outcomes of treatment will provide evidence of the benefits, risks and results of treatment and improve the care that we give to you. We can outcome measures to determine which treatment would be best for your problem.
It is not a legal requirement to do this but The Stanmore Foot and Ankle Unit feels it is an important part of ensuring high quality treatment. It is part of our commitment to provide you with the highest standard of care.
Patient outcome scores
What will patients need to do?
Patients will be asked to complete different questionnaires. Everyone will be asked to complete them before treatment but how often and when they will be completed after treatment will vary for different conditions.
We ask patients to complete questionnaires rather than using our own assessment of them as this often provides a more accurate picture of how they really are. After all whether the patient is happy with the outcome of their treatment is more important than whether we are!
We cannot force patients to complete the questionnaires but ideally we would like everyone to be involved. The greater the number of patients completing questionnaires the more accurate our results will be.
The questionnaires can be completed online via a PC or tablet. Patients will be emailed prior to their appointment with a link to the SCORES patient portal and can complete them at home or work.
If this is not convenient they can be completed in clinic prior to an appointment. If you have been emailed but would prefer to complete them in clinic please arrive at least 15 minutes before your appointment time. If you need help completing them in clinic please ask the clinic staff.