Evaluating Behavioral Healthcare is receiving increasing attention.
Expected government budget shortfalls in 2022 suggest greater emphasis on health care accountability and cost containment.
More efficient, outcome monitoring systems are crucial if behavioral health care costs are to be reduced, and system performance improved. Many behavioral health programs lack ongoing monitoring evaluation systems that include a cost-effective treatment system.
Historically, addiction treatment has been delivered using a fixed duration of treatment such as the 28 day model. Success of these programs have traditionally utilized evaluation data 6 -18 months after the completion of care.
In contrast, treatment for chronic illnesses such as diabetes, and asthma are provided for indeterminate patient stays and the results continuously evaluated during the course of patient treatment. Patient success and wellness are determined during the course of treatment, include monitoring after discharge from care.
The many similarities between addiction and mainstream chronic illnesses stand in contrast to how behavioral heath care is treated and evaluated. The established methods of during-treatment evaluation developed for the treatment of chronic medical illnesses has experts suggesting government adopt a similar evaluation system for addiction and mental health treatment.
An improved system of evaluation for addictions and mental health care would retain traditional patient-level, behavioral outcome measures of recovery. Patient outcomes could be collected and reported regularly by clinicians at the end of addiction treatment sessions to evaluate recovery progress. This system of concurrent recovery monitoring can produce more timely, efficient, and clinically accountable evaluations.
In the past behavioral health treatment has typically relied on treatment attendance and urine screens as indicators of treatment progress. However, modern research has consistently shown that concurrent recovery monitoring can improve behavioral health treatment effectiveness. Research has shown that progress monitoring significantly improves treatment outcomes while reducing costs.
With the growing focus on quality improvement in healthcare, there is a need to reduce costs and improve progressive monitoring methods in behavioral healthcare.
