Hospitals: 4 Sectors Where PREMs & PROMs Have a Significant Impact

By Francis Robichaud, Patient Experience Technology Specialist, September 8, 2025

Modern healthcare systems face many challenges, chief among them enhancing care quality while optimizing resource use. In this context, patient‑reported measures – PROMs (Patient‑Reported Outcome Measures) and PREMs (Patient‑Reported Experience Measures) – emerge as essential tools. 

Unlike traditional metrics, PROMs assess outcomes as perceived by patients (pain, mobility, quality of life), whereas PREMs capture their actual care experience (communication, accessibility, respect during care). 

Across four major clinical domains, this article highlights how these measures are tangibly transforming care.

1. Surgical and Specialized Care

Surgical care is often associated with specific technical procedures and well-defined protocols. However, what separates successful surgery from true recovery are the outcomes and experiences reported by patients post‑procedure.

In this regard, PROMs and PREMs enable hospitals to go beyond conventional clinical outcomes by measuring the real-life impact on daily living and perceived care quality from patients’ perspective.

Orthopedics: Restoring More Than Mobility

In orthopedics – especially hip and knee replacement – the use of PROMs and PREMs is well established. These procedures aim for concrete outcomes : mobility, pain relief, autonomy, making them ideal for patient-centered evaluation.

Why is this approach so widespread?

• ➡️ The care pathways are standardized, facilitating integration of pre‑ and postoperative measurement.
• ➡️ Patients can reliably self-report, enhancing data quality.

For hospitals, the benefits are many:

• ✅ Better patient selection using preoperative scores. For example, the OHS (Oxford Hip Score) and OKS (Oxford Knee Score) tools, recommended as a national standard by the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI).
• ✅ Robust surgical outcome evaluation based on patient-perceived results
• ✅ Continuous care pathway improvement : PREMs identify irritants (such as prep, communication, or post-op support), enabling adjustments grounded in real experiences

💡 Example: the projects for which we use the OKS and OHS questionnaires are knee and hip arthroplasty pathways, in collaboration with the CHU de Québec-Université Laval. An improvement of 5 points (knee) or 5 points (hip) is considered a significant change. Monitoring this threshold allows us to identify the most effective practices and guide clinical decisions and processes.

The outcome: PROMs transform surgery into a measurable, holistic journey, from first consultation to home recovery.

Bariatric Surgery: Measuring Transformation Beyond Weight Loss

Too often, bariatric surgery is reduced to a single metric—weight loss. Yet its effects extend far beyond: self‑esteem, mobility, return to work, mental health.

PROMs (like IWQOL‑Lite and BODY-Q) capture these broader changes, while PREMs highlight key experience elements :

• ➡️ Adequate surgical preparation
• ➡️ Clear explanations
• ➡️ Quality of preoperative and postoperative support, because the bariatric surgery care pathway is very long and preoperative support is just as important as postoperative support.

For hospitals, that means:

• ✅ Detecting gaps in pre- and post-op support
• ✅ Elevating patient experience as a core success indicator
• ✅ Strengthening legitimacy of these interventions within value-based care frameworks

💡 By integrating these measures, hospitals reposition bariatric surgery as a comprehensive life‑changing intervention, well beyond traditional clinical outcomes.

2. Mental and Behavioral Health

Mental health and addiction care present unique challenges: clinical indicators alone often fall short : symptoms may be invisible, recovery paths unpredictable, and relapse risks high. 

That’s precisely why PROMs and PREMs are invaluable: they give patients a direct voice and reveal otherwise hidden transformations.

Mental Health: Measuring the Invisible

When symptoms are subjective and fluctuating, PROMs (e.g. PHQ‑9, GAD‑7, WHODAS) provide nuanced insight into patient progress. 

PREMs, in turn, shed light on factors influencing therapeutic engagement:

• ➡️ Patient-clinician relationship quality
• ➡️ Respect for autonomy
• ➡️ Clarity in shared decision‑making

For healthcare providers, these tools help:

• ✅ Explain patient disengagement despite clinical improvement
• ✅ Uncover systemic barriers (access, continuity, communication)
• ✅ Align care with principles of listening and respect

💡 ICHOM initiatives demonstrate that integrating these tools reduces unplanned hospitalizations, improves adherence, and enhances patient trust.

Substance Use Disorders (SUDs)

Recovery in addiction treatment is rarely linear. PROMs help capture key factors:

• ➡️ Motivation to change
• ➡️ Sense of control
• ➡️ Reconnection with stable social relationships

PREMs reveal what supports sustained engagement: judgment‑free care, continuity, and support during vulnerable periods.

For clinical settings, these measures allow:

• ✅ Better understanding of dropout patterns
• ✅ Adjusted support during critical moments
• ✅ Visibility of lived experience as a central success dimension

💡 ICHOM has developed a specific PROMs/PREMs set for SUDsspecific PROMs/PREMs set for SUDs, marking a shift toward more human-centered, patient-empowering care.

3. Developmentally Sensitive Care

Treating children, adolescents, and young adults demands more than standard clinical benchmarks. 

PROMs and PREMs serve as interpretive tools – helping providers understand how youth experience illness, engage with healthcare systems, and what they truly need to heal.

Pediatrics: Caring in Alignment With Life Trajectories

For young patients, illness intersects with growth, learning, and identity development. PREMs illuminate aspects like caregiver relationships and parental involvement in decisions.

PROMs (e.g. PROMIS, PedsQL) assess:

• ➡️ The effects on pain, in particular symptoms that must be monitored in oncology care pathways for young people, such as the effects on pain and physical symptoms
• ➡️ Sleep quality
• ➡️ Self-esteem and social interactions

For health institutions, these tools enable:

• ✅ Early detection of developmental or psychosocial barriers to engagement
• ✅ Strengthening trust between families and healthcare providers
• ✅ Delivering truly personalized care

💡 Amid rising concerns about youth mental health, these measures are increasingly essential for building fairer and more sensitively responsive care models.

4. Complex Chronic Care

Serious chronic conditions—such as cancer or heart disease—involve long-term, multifactorial realities. Treatment goals go beyond cure; they include prolonging life, preserving quality of life, and maintaining autonomy. 

In these contexts, person-centered metrics are essential to adapt care to the patient’s evolving condition and lived experience.

Oncology

Oncology – particularly for cancers like prostate or colorectal – can vary widely depending on stage, age, patient preferences, and side effects. 

PROMs and PREMs empower care teams to listen, compare, and respond to how treatment changes patients’ lives.

Many patients endure lasting side effects—urinary/sexual dysfunction, chronic fatigue, abdominal pain, recurrence anxiety—but these are rarely documented systematically. 

PROMs (e.g., EPIC‑26, EORTC QLQ‑C30/CR29) let patients report on:

• ➡️ Their physical state
• ➡️ Emotional well-being
• ➡️ Social integration

PREMs complement this by revealing:

• ➡️ Clarity of information provided
• ➡️ Coordination among professionals
• ➡️ Respect for curative or palliative care preferences

For organizations, this supports:

• ✅ Personalized treatment aligned with patient priorities
• ✅ Strengthened shared decision-making
• ✅ Holistic evaluation extending beyond survival statistics

💡 In oncology, these tools refocus care on dignity, comfort, and quality of life – rather than solely ‘staying alive.’

Measuring PROMs and PREMs in Hospitals to Optimize the Care Pathway

Whether in surgery, mental health, pediatrics, or oncology, one truth is clear: PROMs and PREMs reshape how institutions design, deliver, and evaluate care. They deepen insight into outcomes from the patient’s perspective, uncover clinical and organizational blind spots, and help shift from a system that treats for patients to one that heals with them. 

They equip organizations to prioritize what truly matters: perceived quality, real-life impact, and trust as a foundation.

At Lime, we firmly believe that the future of healthcare lies in this transformation—where every patient‑reported data point is an opportunity to improve, together.