Patient-reported outcomes in integrated health and social care: A scoping review

Background: Patient-reported outcomes (PROs) have potential to support integrated health and social care research and practice; however, evidence of their utilisation has not been synthesised.

Objective: To identify PRO measures utilised in integrated care and adult social care research and practice and to chart the evidence of implementation factors influencing their uptake.

Design: Scoping review of peer-reviewed literature.

Data sources: Six databases (01 January 2010 to 19 May 2023).

Study selection: Articles reporting PRO use with adults (18+ years) in integrated care or social care settings.

Review methods: We screened articles against pre-specified eligibility criteria; 36 studies (23%) were extracted in duplicate for verification. We summarised the data using thematic analysis and descriptive statistics.

Results: We identified 159 articles reporting on 216 PRO measures deployed in a social care or integrated care setting. Most articles used PRO measures as research tools. Eight (5.0%) articles used PRO measures as an intervention. Articles focused on community-dwelling participants (35.8%) or long-term care home residents (23.9%), with three articles (1.9%) focussing on integrated care settings. Stakeholders viewed PROs as feasible and acceptable, with benefits for care planning, health and wellbeing monitoring as well as quality assurance. Patient-reported outcome measure selection, administration and PRO data management were perceived implementation barriers.

Conclusion: This scoping review showed increasing utilisation of PROs in adult social care and integrated care. Further research is needed to optimise PROs for care planning, design effective training resources and develop policies and service delivery models that prioritise secure, ethical management of PRO data.