The quality of treatment can never rise above the quality of the assessment on which it is based.
“When behavioral health programs use many of the ‘canned’ computer assisted assessments out there, they are frequently failing to collect vital, specific information on their patient, hence the treatment plan is substandard, so of course the treatment itself is missing key issues the patient likely needs to address.”
You cannot say your program is successful if you are not comprehensively measuring what it is you are doing. Too many organizations are claiming successful results without the performance data to back up their claim. There is no shortcut to quality; measurement has to be built into daily operational performance and staff have to be trained in quality monitoring.
“Of the hundreds of patient records I have reviewed, it is safe to say that the vast majority do not meet current national standards.”
As a national surveyor it is hard to tell whether the treatment is in fact changing the patient and his/her behavior. Most of the time, the counselor lists what it is the counselor is going to do and how many sessions the patient will sit through—so if the patient can sit long enough, he/she is a treatment success?” “It is most often impossible to match the patient’s treatment plan with what is going on in the counseling process. Progress notes too often do not even address the treatment plan objectives in any measurable fashion.
‘The future is now: payers expect to pay for successful performance outcomes – this means reliable care that is worth the cost. We have to establish a chronic care model for treatment of addictions and co-occurring disorders that is cost-effective and demonstrates value – no small challenge. This is the new responsibility for behavioral health providers.”
Consumers are not just economic bundles of desires but rather human beings who can’t be satisfied, simply by having lots of things.
Sustainable businesses will help us escape addiction by offering carefully designed products and services that bring the real world into present reality of poor patient records.
