164 Chapter 8 the OQUA facilitates shared decision-making by enabling clinicians to discuss PROM scores with patients in consultations and also compare or provide benchmark data (the mean outcomes of all patients in the Netherlands). This exchange allows a good reference to serve more personalized treatment plans, aligned with patient-reported outcomes rather than relying solely on objective measures. Linking the OQUA to key clinical moments, such as surgery, allows for the systematic collection of data. Feedback from OQUA results, especially in a national registry, could encourage ongoing management adjustments, making patient engagement an integral part of the care process and fostering a more collaborative relationship. Thirdly, because the OQUA covers all common ear complaints it can be used in the general population, patient population at the general practitioner as well as in the ENT practice. The in chapter 6 obtained normative OQUA data are intended to enhance shared decision-making consultations for patients experiencing ear complaints, but also give us more insight on ear complaints in the general population. The data could also be compared with future results as presented in epidemiology studies. Fourthly, the use of the OQUA will make several disease-specific PROMs less attractive to use in a larger ENT clinic with many different patient groups. Even in a smaller clinic the use of many different PROMs to evaluate the several patient groups will not add to the practicality. While we advocate for the increased use of PROMs in clinical practice, it’s essential to recognize that a PROM score is only one element in a patient’s clinical narrative. Rather than relying on a hard-and-fast number for defining clinically meaningful change in a PROM score, providers should, and many already do, consider the full scope of a patient’s experience as those issues matter in treatment decisions.29 This approach emphasizes that PROM scores are valuable only when integrated into a comprehensive care strategy, combining the clinical findings, imaging, and other objective tests, rather than being treated as standalone measures of health outcomes. Trying to bring standardization in patient reported outcomes using the OQUA Aggregated data from multiple providers can be utilized for quality improvement through benchmarking, shared learning, and shared decision-making support tools.30,31 And thus, development of a standard set of PROs for specific domains or diseases is important. This is proven to be feasible in generic problems (e.g. fatigue,
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