Collecting patient-reported outcome data at different time points via telephone interviews: an exploratory study

Abstract Background Patient Reported Outcome measurement (PROM) is a key tool for measuring patients’ perception and preference on health status and interventions. As the recent shift towards patient-centered care has put more focus on PROM, more so on cancer treatments. Collecting PROM can be quite challenging and numerous ways is employed to collect PROM more effectively and efficient. Here we try to explore the feasibility of telephone interview on PROM data on different timepoints. Method Thirty-five ACC patients were recruited from Sun Yat-Sen University Affiliated Hospital and interviewed using the EQ-5D and EQ-HWB questionnaires, assessing their health status at three time points: pre-surgery (TA), post-surgery (TB), and follow-up (TC). We observe the difference in dimension severity between these different timepoint to check whether we capture relevant health changes from events such as surgery. Results Results indicate that telephone interview could be a feasible method to collect PROM data from cancer patient. We were able to contact 35 out of 54 patients, no missing data was present on the collected data. We found statistically significant difference on relevant dimensions between different timepoints. Conclusion In conclusion, measuring the quality-of-life outcome of individuals through telephone interviews seems feasible, and some of the results align with our hypothesis. Measuring health status through telephone medium for follow-up could be a potential way to collect patient health data more efficiently and effectively, but further research is expected.