Development and pilot of a community low-vision, service-specific Patient-Reported Experience Measure

Rebecca Bartlett; Rachel Absalom; Owen Williams; Kathleen Withers

doi:10.1111/opo.13130

Development and pilot of a community low-vision, service-specific Patient-Reported Experience Measure

Ophthalmic Physiol Opt. 2023 Jul;43(4):702-709. doi: 10.1111/opo.13130. Epub 2023 Mar 28.

Authors

Rebecca Bartlett¹, Rachel Absalom¹, Owen Williams², Kathleen Withers³

Affiliations

¹ Low Vision Service Wales, Hywel Dda University Health Board, Carmarthen, UK.
² Wales Council of the Blind, CF24 0BL, Cardiff, UK.
³ Cedar Health Technology Research Centre, Cardiff and Vale University Health Board, Cardiff, UK.

PMID: 36974523
DOI: 10.1111/opo.13130

Abstract

Purpose: Patient-Reported Experience Measures (PREMs) act to identify the patient's objective experience while receiving care. PREM data can provide feedback to professionals on patients' personal experience of care processes, quality of care and insight into patient expectations. This can support service improvements and person-centeredness of care. Despite this, PREMs are not currently routinely collected for any primary eye care services in Wales, inclusive of the National Low Vision Service Wales (LVSW). The primary aim of this project was to develop and pilot a community low-vision, service-specific, PREM (LVSWPREM).

Methods: The development of the LVSWPREMs was performed in partnership with LVSW service users. Fourteen people attended three successive, 1.5-h online focus groups, and informed the development of a draft of LVSWPREMs inclusive of item generation and face validity. Following several rounds of iterative improvements based on the feedback gathered during the focus groups, LVSWPREM V4.0 was agreed upon and piloted for a period of 3 months within Hywel Dda University Health Board. Reliability of the final LVSWPREM V4.0 was assessed using Cronbach α.

Results: The final LVSWPREMs consisted of two parts: (1) LVSW-specific items and (2) a generic PREM tool approved by the Welsh Government for use across National Health Service Wales. Reliability analyses with item deletion were conducted for each construct separately using Cronbach α and were 0.94 and 0.63 for parts 1 and 2, respectively.

Conclusion: The LVSWPREM is a validated, reliable tool, which can be used to provide information regarding patients' experience of accessing a community-based, low-vision service. Developed in partnership with people with vision impairment, it has the potential to be useful as a means of patient engagement and improvement in the delivery of high-quality healthcare.

Keywords: Patient-Reported Experience Measures; low vision; public and patient involvement; service improvement; vision impairment.

MeSH terms

Humans
Patient Reported Outcome Measures
Reproducibility of Results
State Medicine*
Vision, Low*