Implementing the mental health patient reported outcome measure Recovering Quality of Life – ReQoL

Background

Patient Reported Outcome Measures (PROMs) are questionnaires that ask service users about their health. Completing one before, during and after treatment can help measure change and track progress. Routine outcome monitoring using PROMs can provide evidence about the effectiveness of care someone is receiving and help practitioners and services understand whether they are meeting the needs of their patients. Recovering Quality of Life (ReQoL) is a patient reported outcome measure designed to measure change in mental health. It focuses on recovery of quality of life and asks about things that service users have said are important to them. ReQoL was launched in 2016 and since then many Mental Health Trusts have chosen to implement routine collection of ReQoL in their services. Following the launch of ReQoL, many trusts sought guidance about ways to promote and champion its use as part of routine service delivery and care.

How our ARC helped to implement ReQoL

• We developed a ReQoL Community of Practice – a community of like-minded people sharing their learning and knowledge about implementing ReQoL, and the use of ReQoL in their clinical practice. The community includes clinicians, peer support workers, managers, outcome leads, IT leads and commissioners.
• Hosted two events to help support the implementation of ReQoL.
• We spoke at conferences, board level, team level on how to effectively implement ReQoL.
• Developed an online ReQoL-10 Visualisation tool to enhance meaningful clinical discussions.
• Had conversations with Electronic Patient Record (EPR) providers.

Impact

• Nearly 300 ReQoL licences have been issued.
• It has been adopted for use by a number of NHS Trusts
• As part of the 2019 NHS Long Term Plan, Community Mental Health (CMH) services are undergoing a huge transformation, with an investment of almost £1bn per year by 2023/24. An important feature of the transformation programme is increasing the use of PROMs. NHS England established an expert stakeholder task and finish group to support a consistent approach to PROM collection and this group recommended that three specific PROMs for use in CMS. One of the three recommended PROMs that will be embedded in all CMH teams in the country is ReQoL.