AcademyHealth is the professional home for health services researchers, policy analysts, and practitioners, and is a leading, non-partisan resource for the best in health research and policy. This series is being offered, and Dr. Ware is conducting it, to provide health care professionals with an introduction to the latest in health services research methods involving the measurement of patient-reported health outcomes and the practical applications of that in health care.

AcademyHealth Cyber Seminars are offered for a low fee and are open to any interested party. All Cyber Seminars run from 1:00 - 3:00 p.m. ET. For more information, including full course descriptions and details on registration, visit www.academyhealth.org/cyberseminars/live.

• Monitoring Health Outcomes From the Patient Point of View: Introduction to the Concepts, Methods, and Applications
  (Thurs., October 23)

  This introductory workshop provides an overview and update of the current state-of-the-art health-related quality of life (HRQOL) assessment for various applications in the U.S. and internationally. Topics include the reasons for self-assessment of HRQOL, advances in conceptual frameworks, advantages of generic and disease-specific measures, and the features of measurement tools that matter most for each application including: population surveys, clinical trials and outcomes research, disease and risk management, and improving decision-making at the individual patient level. Next steps in this rapidly evolving field, including the value of cross-calibrating widely-used health metrics, maintaining forward and backward comparability of results, other advances in measurement science, and the importance of achieving a sustainable business model for patient-reported health outcomes, are discussed.

  Level: Introductory

• Improving Patient-Reported Health Outcomes Assessments: Computerized Dynamic Health Assessments on the Internet
  (Fri., November 21)

  This introductory workshop provides an overview of breakthroughs in applications of computerized adaptive testing (CAT) logic that are revolutionizing generic and disease-specific outcomes assessment on the Internet, via telephone and using hand-held devices. Implications include "smart" measures that: are more practical and more responsive to changes over time, substantially reduce respondent burden, eliminate "ceiling" and "floor" effects over a wide range of severity levels, and lower data collection costs. A case study of the first and most extensively evaluated CAT-based functional health assessment on the Internet - the Headache Impact Test (HIT™) - will be reviewed and demonstrated to show how widely-used scales can be cross-calibrated and computerized dynamic health surveys can be programmed to match their questions to each respondent to provide an immediate score that can be compared and interpreted regardless of whether the same questions are answered.

  Level: Introductory

• Interpreting Health Outcomes From the Patient Point of View: Introduction to the Scoring and Interpretation of Health Outcomes
  (Thurs., December 11)

  In answer to one of the most common questions in health care - "What do the results mean?" - this introductory workshop provides an overview of how health outcomes measures should be scored and interpreted. Published and unpublished examples illustrate the tradeoffs between the options of scoring and interpreting health profiles versus summary measures. Interpretation guidelines include comparisons with general population norms, disease-specific benchmarks, clinical and other standards of importance, and results from predictive studies (e.g., medical expenditures, return to work and work productivity, and mortality). Specific examples are presented to illustrate the interpretation of results from population surveys, clinical trials and outcomes research, and individual patient assessments in clinical practice to address the needs of different audiences.

  Level: Introductory

For information on QualityMetric Incorporated, click here.