Patient-Reported Outcome Metrics in Total Joint Arthroplasty

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act includes several provisions that focus on improving the delivery of health care in the United States. Reducing overall healthcare costs and improving the quality of care delivered are two overarching themes of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. An evaluation of quality in total joint arthroplasty focuses on three main areas: complications, readmissions, and, more recently, patient-reported outcomes. Patient-reported outcomes allow surgeons and patients to objectively document pain relief and functional gain after total joint arthroplasty. Surgeons, groups, or hospitals that commit to the collection of patient-reported outcomes must consider which patient-reported outcomes to capture, the workflow and timing of postoperative patient-reported outcome collection, and how to minimize the burden of patient-reported outcome collection on both patients and surgeons.