Leveraging patient experience measures as surrogate outcomes to evaluate health care interventions

Patient experience quality measure scores are widely accepted as outcomes in health services research. For some patients and in some settings, such as hospice care, they can be the most important outcomes. While these measures are widely used, the potential to use them as surrogate outcomes in a clinical trial sense has gone under-recognized. The purpose of this commentary is to discuss the use of patient experience measures as potential surrogate outcomes in evaluating the effect of a health care intervention.