Use of Patient-Reported Outcomes Measurement Information System (PROMIS) measures to characterise health status for patients seeking care from an orthopaedic provider: a retrospective cohort study

OBJECTIVES: Characterise the health status of patients newly consulting an orthopaedic specialist across eight clinical subspecialties. DESIGN: Retrospective cohort. SETTING: 18 orthopaedic clinics, including 8 subspecialties (14 ambulatory and 4 hospital based) within an academic health system. PARTICIPANTS: 14 910 patients consulting an orthopaedic specialist for a new patient consultation who completed baseline Patient-Reported Outcomes Measurement Information System (PROMIS) measures associated with their appointment from 17 November 2017 to 13 May 2019. Patients were aged 55.72±5.8 years old, and 61.3% were female and 79.3% were Caucasian and 13.4% were black or African American. Patients who did not complete PROMIS measures or cancelled their appointment were excluded from the study. PRIMARY OUTCOME: PROMIS domains of physical function, pain interference, pain intensity, depression, anxiety, fatigue, sleep disturbance and the ability to participate in social roles. RESULTS: Mean PROMIS scores for physical function were (38.1±9.2), pain interference (58.9±8.1), pain intensity (4.6±2.5), depression (47.9±8.9), anxiety (49.9±9.5), fatigue (50.5±10.3), sleep disturbance (51.1±9.8) and ability to participate in social roles (49.1±10.3) for the entire cohort. Across the clinical subspecialties, neurosurgery, spine and trauma patients were most profoundly affected across almost all domains and patients consulting with a hand specialist reported the least limitations or symptoms across domains. There was a moderate, negative correlation between pain interference and physical functioning (r=−0.59) and low correlations between pain interference with anxiety (r=0.36), depression (r=0.39) as well as physical function and anxiety (r=−0.32) and depression(r=−0.30) and sleep (r=−0.31). CONCLUSIONS: We directly compared clinically meaningful PROMIS domains across eight orthopaedic subspecialties, which would not have been possible with legacy measures alone. These results support PROMIS’s utility as a common metric to assess and compare patient health status across multiple orthopaedic subspecialties.