The benefits and challenges of using patient-reported evaluation within a rapid evaluation to inform decision-making: providing feedback for decision-makers using a case study of Wales’ Long COVID service evaluation (ORIGINAL ARTICLE)

The benefits and challenges of using patient-reported evaluation within a rapid evaluation to inform decision-making: providing feedback for decision-makers using a case study of Wales’ Long COVID service evaluation (ORIGINAL ARTICLE)

post-acute COVID-19 syndrome, Wales, programme evaluation, patient-reported outcomes, PROMs, PREMs, national health programmes

Rationale: Rapid evaluation is useful within the development and roll-out of a new healthcare service to identify successes and failures, which
ultimately informs decision-making. The Long COVID services within Wales, which form part of the Welsh Government’s ‘Adferiad’ Programme,
required a rapid evaluation. Patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs) and patient-reported experience measures (PREMs) were used to meet
the Welsh Government’s prudent and Value-Based healthcare agenda.
Objectives: To document the benefits and challenges of using PROMs and PREMs as part of a rapid evaluation, in the context of the Long COVID
service, to provide evidence for decision-makers.
Methodology: A reflective discussion has been used to explore the benefits and challenges of undertaking a rapid evaluation using patient-reported
data, which took place between September 2021 and December 2022.
Results: Facilitators included harnessing cross-organizational working, clear communication, good stakeholder engagement, rapid decision-making,
and use of validated PROM and PREMs to increase rapidity of roll-out and ability to collect data at a national level. Barriers included the lack of
information governance permission to collect patient identifiable data, a lack of a comparator group, inability to collect response rate information
and use of multiple survey platforms.
Conclusions: Future rapid and standard evaluations, and research in Wales should consider harnessing and developing cross health board working,
to collect patient identifiable data, response rate information and use a single data collection platform. This would enable the collection of a rich data
source that could inform national programmes of work. The rapid evaluation of the Long COVID service in Wales provided a useful resource, using
patient-reported outcomes (PROs) to inform decision-making, and has highlighted valuable opportunities for cross-organizational working in Wales.

Katherine E.Woolley, , KathleenWithers, Robert Palmer, Megan Dale, Sarah Puntoni, Claire Madsen, Rhys Morris

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1093/ijcoms/lyaf017

Oxford University Press

24 October 2025

Sri Wahyuni

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