Elevating Patient Voices to Improve Opioid Use Disorder Quality Measurement: A Survey Protocol

Area of Science:

• Health Services Research
• Public Health
• Health Outcomes

Background:

• Public payers fund over half of US opioid use disorder (OUD) treatments.
• Patient-reported outcomes are underutilized in OUD quality improvement initiatives.
• Existing quality measures often lack patient perspectives on treatment engagement and quality of life.

Purpose of the Study:

• To describe the survey protocol for Project ELVIS (Elevating patient Voices to Improve OUD Treatment Quality).
• To test the relationship between patient-reported and claims-based measures of OUD treatment quality.
• To inform quality improvement initiatives by integrating patient experiences into OUD care assessment.

Main Methods:

• Project ELVIS employs iterative engagement with individuals with lived experience and Medicaid policymakers.
• A policy-driven regional survey sampling approach prioritizes Medicaid decision-making relevance.
• Planned linkages between self-reported patient experiences and administrative data quality measures.

Main Results:

• The commentary outlines the innovative survey protocol for Project ELVIS.
• The project aims to link patient experiences with claims-based quality measures.
• This linkage is expected to explain variations in provider performance and patient treatment journeys.

Conclusions:

• Project ELVIS introduces a novel, patient-centered approach to OUD treatment quality measurement.
• Integrating patient experiences can enhance the understanding and utility of quality metrics.
• The project supports the development of process-based measures complementing utilization-based metrics for OUD care.