What is a COA or Clinical Outcome Assessment?

The term Clinical Outcome Assessment or COA covers a number of health outcomes assessment instruments (questionnaires), including Patient Reported Outcome (PRO) measures (or PROMs, as used in the UK); Clinician Reported Outcome (ClinRO’s) measures; Performance Outcomes measures (PerfO’s) and Observer-Reported Outcome (ObsRO) measures. Most of the health outcome measurement instruments that we manage and support are PRO measures.

The vast majority of medical interventions intend to maintain or improve patient functioning and well-being. Consequently, the intervention should have a positive impact upon the quality of life of the individual. Despite the obvious patient-centric perspective to the assessment of well-being, the medical profession has not traditionally undertaken systematic evaluation of patient-based reports. Medical professionals have tended to rely on questions such as, how does the patient feel, or asking them to describe symptoms. However, clinicians and medical researchers are increasingly measuring quality of life alongside lab data. For this reason Patient Reported Outcome (PRO) measures are used to quantify the quality of life or other outcome from the patient’s perspective as part of the medical evaluation.