Behavioral health providers are often struggling to find ways to increase their revenue and provide more effective care. One of the best ways to do this is to utilize measurement based care behavioral health (MBC). Measurement-based care is the systematic administration of validated measures and other assessment tools to initially assess, inform beginning and ongoing treatment decisions, improve patient outcomes, and measure results.
Benefits of Measurement-Based Care
Research shows that using MBC results in better patient outcomes, including higher response rates to treatment, fewer sessions needed, and more patients in remission. MBC also helps to overcome treatment inertia, which is when a patient’s symptoms continue to worsen even after treatment has started. This can prompt clinicians to consider changing their treatment plan.
Clinicians have found that MBC improves their clinical decision making and helps them to provide a more personalized experience for their patients. It also promotes care coordination in multi-provider teams and across clinical spaces.
Patient-Reported Symptoms are a Must for MBC
Providing effective mental health care requires understanding how your patients feel. To help you achieve this, use symptom rating scales to capture patients’ responses in an objective manner. These scales can be used to identify which symptoms are most prevalent and are likely the cause of problems.
They can also be used to track a patient’s symptom fluctuations over time and assist you in developing differential diagnoses. These scores are also helpful for tracking medication response and ensuring your patients are receiving appropriate dosages.
The Benefits of Self-Reported Symptoms are Many
In addition to helping you understand your clients’ symptoms, utilizing self-reported symptom ratings can be a great way to deepen a client’s awareness of their symptoms and to get them more involved in their own treatment. Having the patient participate in the process can help them to develop coping skills and strategies to manage their symptoms.
A Person-Centered Approach to Symptoms is Good for You
Another important benefit of using symptom ratings is that they support a person-centered approach to treating patients. This is because people are more aware of their symptoms than other health professionals and can offer a more holistic perspective on their symptoms. It can also help to break down the stigma surrounding mental illness.
This approach can be an effective way to reduce stress and burnout among behavioral health practitioners. It can also lead to increased engagement from the patient by allowing them to recognize their own progress, and it can help to connect them with others who are experiencing similar struggles.
These symptom ratings can be easily and accurately completed by the client themselves, and it is easy to incorporate them into a digital platform that collects patient data for treatment planning purposes.
Increasingly, the healthcare industry is pushing for more objective data collection to evaluate outcomes. For example, Medicare and Medicaid now require objective documentation of improvement from the healthcare provider in order to pay for treatment.
While this is an important step in the mental health space, it can be difficult to obtain accurate results without a sophisticated and comprehensive platform that integrates a wide range of metrics. Luckily, Owl’s behavioral health solution integrates all the elements that are necessary for a successful measurement-based care program. It automates the symptom ratings and provides scoring, norms, and graphing to monitor the patient’s progress. The platform is also designed to quickly onboard new patients, assess their needs, and triage them to the right clinician.