What Dermatology Still Needs to Create Meaningful Patient Outcome Measurements

In this issue of JAMA Dermatology, Pascoe and colleagues¹ present a feasibility pilot study implementing Physician Global Assessment (PGA) scores to collect and track outcomes for patients with acne and psoriasis seen in clinics at one academic medical center over a 16-month period. Patient Global Assessments (PtGAs) were also collected from a small subset of patients in an effort to assess concordance with PGA scores. While it is not known whether the validity and ease of data gathering are generalizable to other practice settings, we commend the authors for taking this large step to test the practicality of using an extremely simple scoring system to track outcomes for common skin diseases.