measurement based care mental health (MBC) in mental health is an effective tool to improve treatment outcomes, reduce the number of sessions required, and ensure patients reach remission. MBC is a key component of psychiatric care, as it helps providers monitor and adjust treatment plans based on symptoms, response to treatment, illness severity, and suicide risk in real time.
MBC involves routine assessment of outcome measures using validated rating scales to guide clinical decision making in a variety of treatments and situations. This includes monitoring and adjusting medication and counseling based on these outcomes, ensuring patient progress by reevaluating a treatment plan if the outcome is not achieved, and prompting changes in treatment if a patient is demonstrating deterioration.
Several factors contribute to MBC efficacy and sustainability, including the use of symptom rating scales that are reliable and sensitive to change, a synchronous process for collecting symptom data, and the timely provision of feedback on symptom data. Many randomized trials found that frequent and timely symptom rating scale feedback during medication management and psychotherapy encounters significantly improved outcomes. In contrast, asynchronous, one-time screening or symptom rating scale data collected outside the context of clinical encounters was found ineffective in multiple studies.
Collecting Symptoms Scales Before Each Session
MBC programs require accurate symptom severity data to inform clinical decision making and ensure that the patient is receiving optimal treatment. This requires symptom measurement scales that are both reliable and sensitive to change and which are current and readily available during the clinical encounter. It also requires that the symptom rating scale data are displayed in the patient electronic medical record so that they can be reviewed and used as part of the clinician-patient communication during each visit.
Aggregating Symptom Rating Scale Data to Improve Practices and Improve Payers
When individual symptom rating scale data are aggregated at the provider, practice, or health care system level, it can serve as a valuable indicator of improvement in clinical practices and can inform payers about the value of mental health services. It can also help to promote professional development and practice improvement.
In addition, it can increase efficiency of clinical services and lead to higher reimbursement. In fact, when compared to usual care in a trial of treatment outcomes, MBC-based treatment results in significantly higher response rates to medication and reduced treatment duration and frequency.
This is largely due to the fact that patients are more likely to respond to treatment and achieve remission when symptom scores are measured and viewed frequently and consistently. MBC also makes it easier to detect if symptoms are still present and prompts providers to modify or expand the treatment plan until they have remitted completely.
MBC is a powerful tool to improve patient outcomes and make the treatment experience more efficient, rewarding, and meaningful for both patients and clinicians. It can save time and money for patients, allowing them to receive more focused, targeted treatment that will have a positive impact on their lives. It can also increase patient satisfaction, as patients are able to see their progress and feel that their care is being monitored and evaluated in real time.