Routine assessment of patient-reported outcomes in behavioral health: room for improvement.
Outcomes assessment has become an important tool in assessing the quality of health care. To date, most quality initiatives have focused on adverse events, clinical processes, and/or cost variables. Considerably less attention has been paid to indices of clinical improvement, especially from a patient's perspective and in behavioral health settings. The relative inattention given to clinical improvement is attributable to a number of reasons, including (but not limited to) a lack of consensus regarding measures of improvement, few simple methods for data collection and analysis, and an inability to provide timely feedback. In this article, the authors describe a Web-based system designed to routinely collect quality-of-life ratings from patients in outpatient behavioral health clinics, allowing for real-time feedback at the patient levels regarding clinical improvement. The system also allows for administrative evaluation of overall clinic performance. The costs and benefits of this system are discussed.
Madan
Alok
A
Department of Psychiatry, Medical University of South Carolina, Charleston, SC 29425, USA.
Borckardt
Jeffrey J
JJ
Connell
Alexa
A
Book
Sarah B
SB
Campbell
Sallie
S
Gwynette
McLeod F
MF
Wimberly
Lisa A
LA
Wagner
Mark
M
Weinstein
Benjamin
B
McLeod-Bryant
Stephen
S
Cooney
Harriet
H
Herbert
Joan
J
D001524:Behavioral Medicine; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D020407:Internet; D008297:Male; D017063:Outcome Assessment, Health Care / Q000379:methods*; D011785:Quality Assurance, Health Care; D011788:Quality of Life; D014481:United States