These efforts typically require health care data so that opportunities to empower patients, improve care, and control costs can be identified.

With this in mind, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) is providing PatientsLikeMe an online patient network with a $900,000 grant so as to extend a research platform to create or enhance performance measures that give patients a voice and put them at the center of the clinical research process. PatientsLikeMe will partner with the National Quality Forum to develop, test, and facilitate broader use of patient-reported outcome measures and ensure that they can be used alongside clinician-reported measures to assess clinical performance.

Over the past several years, numerous entities have made impressive strides in measuring and reporting provider performance data to detect where improvement is needed. Including information reported directly by patients themselves makes performance data more useful to consumers as they seek care and empowers patients, families, and clinicians to make health care more patient-centered.

A clinician may consider a treatment effective because he or she can observe reductions in medical symptoms during an office visit. When examined alongside clinical and administrative performance data, patient-reported outcome measures help push health care improvement insights beyond the walls of the clinic so those measures encompass what is most meaningful to patients’ daily lives. Select A TopicCosts and SpendingDrugs and Medical TechnologyElsewhere@ Health AffairsEquity and DisparitiesFollowing the ACAGlobal HealthGrantWatchHealth ITHealth Policy LabHealth ProfessionalsHospitalsInnovations in Care DeliveryInsurance and CoverageLong-term Services and SupportsMedicaid and CHIPMedicareNarrative MattersOnce in a WeilOrganization and DeliveryPayment PolicyPopulation HealthPublic HealthQuality