Ideas and Methods in Person-Centered Outcome Metrology

Abstract

AbstractBroadly stated, this book makes the case for a different way of thinking about how to measure and manage person-centered outcomes in health care. The basic contrast is between statistical and metrological definitions of measurement. The mainstream statistical tradition focuses attention on numbers in centrally planned and executed data analyses, while metrology focuses on distributing meaningfully interpretable instruments throughout networks of end users. The former approaches impose group-level statistics from the top down in homogenizing ways. The latter tracks emergent patterns from the bottom up, feeding them back to end users in custom tailored applications, whose decisions and behaviors are coordinated by means of shared languages. New forms of information and knowledge necessitate new forms of social organization to create them and put them to use. The chapters in this book describe the analytic, design, and organizational methods that have the potential to open up exciting new possibilities for systematic and broad scale improvements in health care outcomes.