Orthopedic Surgery

Overview

Shawn W. O'Driscoll, M.D., Ph.D., orthopedic surgeon at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, discusses a study of an outcome scoring system measured for patient-physician agreement. He and colleagues published the study's results in an article in the January 2018 Mayo Clinic Proceedings. Dr. O'Driscoll explains that there can be differences in how patients and their physicians would score the value of their outcomes. He says the system used in the study, the Summary Outcome Determination (SOD), is built on four principles that are simple and value-based, promote patient-centered treatment and are generalizable to any medical specialty. The investigators reviewed post-treatment medical records of 320 patients who had undergone shoulder or elbow procedures and included 164 patients in the study for whom both physicians and patients had completed the SOD. The investigators found a high level of correlation in the SOD categories and numerical values assigned to the patient's outcome by the physician and the patient in the study.

Dr. O'Driscoll advocates use of the SOD, explaining that this easy-to-use-and-understand scoring system drives the physician to assess the patient's priorities pre-treatment and then post-treatment, rating how much better — or not — their condition is compared to pre-treatment.

The full article is available at: https://www.mayoclinicproceedings.org/article/S0025-6196(17)30741-3/fulltext