Background Patient-reported outcome measures [PROMS] are validated surveys which can enhance decision-making and guide clinicians to address patients’ most pressing concerns. Increasing in use since the turn of the century, PROMS are employed to gauge patients’ clinical outcomes including symptoms, health-related quality-of-life and functional status. In Australia, although PROMS have been widely used in community and inpatient settings as part of national dataset collection, they have had only limited utility in tertiary hospital palliative care outpatient clinical services. Given the rise of telehealth implementation in the COVID-19 pandemic environment, alongside increases in digital health tools in recent years, PROMS applied to virtual supportive and palliative care clinics may not only facilitate better understanding of patients’ needs and improve communication but also provide a self-reporting approach to detect evolving issues between clinic appointments. This implementation project invited clinicians, patients, and family members with palliative care experience to co-design the implementation paradigm of an electronic PROM (ePROM) tool for use by oncology patients attending palliative care virtual clinics.

Aim To identify barriers and expectations of clinicians and consumers in introducing an e-PROM system into clinical settings and inform an implementation strategy.

Methods Convenience sampling and mixed data collection were applied. Focus group interviews with clinicians and verbal surveys with consumers were conducted. Both clinicians and consumers were sampled from Monash Health services. Focus group interviews were transcribed verbatim and analysed using thematic analysis. Descriptive statistics and content analysis were used to analyse the verbal survey. The Consolidated Framework for Implementation Research guided the identification of key theme and code categories, as well as outline the implementation strategy.

Results Nine clinicians and 14 consumers participated. Qualitative data of both target groups was found to be saturated. While all participants expressed a readiness to use e-PROMs, barriers associated with clinical resources, such as a lack of administrative/clinical liaison support as well as patients’ characteristics, such as age, language, and technical literacy were identified. Developing a procedural guideline that delineates the process, purpose and goal of e-PROM usage and identifying a clinical liaison role are significant for the implementation phase.

Conclusion Ensuring the involvement of clinicians and consumers is critical in developing approaches to address identified barriers for ePROMs. Considering participants as ‘quasi-researchers’ is impactful in co-ordinating/providing/delivering a safe and consumer-focused ePROM implementation. The findings of this research will facilitate a feasible ePROMS paradigm for use by oncology patients attending palliative care virtual clinics, with the potential of improved patient-centred care in the age of digital health tools.