title: Routine assessment of patient-reported outcomes in behavioral health: room for improvement.
abstract: 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.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry, Medical University of South Carolina, Charleston, SC 29425, USA.
authors.forename: Alok
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Madan
authors.forename: Jeffrey J
authors.initials: JJ
authors.lastname: Borckardt
authors.forename: Alexa
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Connell
authors.forename: Sarah B
authors.initials: SB
authors.lastname: Book
authors.forename: Sallie
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Campbell
authors.forename: McLeod F
authors.initials: MF
authors.lastname: Gwynette
authors.forename: Lisa A
authors.initials: LA
authors.lastname: Wimberly
authors.forename: Mark
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Wagner
authors.forename: Benjamin
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Weinstein
authors.forename: Stephen
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: McLeod-Bryant
authors.forename: Harriet
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Cooney
authors.forename: Joan
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Herbert
mesh_terms: 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