Landmark Articles Published by QualityMetric Scientists Report Improvements in Short Form Health Status Measures and Establish Criteria for Future D...( Invited Commentary by John E. Ware Jr...),Health

Invited Commentary by John E. Ware, Jr., PhD, provides context to the past,

present and future use of patient-reported outcomes as a leading

performance metric for healthcare quality

LINCOLN, R.I., Jan. 30 /PRNewswire/ -- As the healthcare industry struggles to balance cost with quality, standardized and scientifically valid outcomes data provides real-time, actionable health information to support clinical and business decision-making. In a recently published Invited Commentary appearing in the Journal of Clinical Epidemiology (JCE), Volume 61, Number 1, January 2008, John E. Ware, Jr., PhD, Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board of QualityMetric Health Outcomes Solutions, outlines noted improvements made to short-form health outcomes surveys (including the SF-36v2(R), SF-12v2(R), and SF-8(TM) Health Surveys), significantly increasing their usefulness and application and enhancing their value as a recognized measurement standard for healthcare quality.

Ware's Invited Commentary also serves as introduction to a series of QualityMetric articles scheduled to appear in the JCE throughout 2008. Article topics range from the detailed substantiation of improvements made to "static" (paper and pencil administered) outcomes surveys to evaluating the migration to electronic data capture using computer adaptive testing (CAT), a measurement advancement first introduced to healthcare by QualityMetric over eight years ago. "Of note, we are publishing proof in the JCE article series that our CAT software is a more practical and precise way of knowing what the SF-36v2(R) Health Survey, the world's most widely accepted standard for outcomes measurement, tells us," commented Ware. "Practically speaking, we're making outcomes measurement faster, easier and more precise than ever before, while maintaining complete comparability with over 20 years of reliability and validity evidence and interpretation guidelines."

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