Unveiling the Magic Behind Measurement-Based Care in Behavioral Health 📏✨
While behavioral health has been slow on the adoption curve for measurement-based care, tailwinds are boosting its use and uptake with upside for patients and clinicians alike.
After a bit of an extended holiday break, we’re back! Today, we're diving deep into the realm of Measurement-Based Care (MBC) in behavioral health, and trust us, it's as revolutionary as it sounds. MBC isn't just another buzzword floating around the vast ocean of healthcare innovations—it's a lifeline reshaping how we approach mental health treatment, making waves for patients and clinicians alike. So, buckle up as we embark on this enlightening journey together!
What is Measurement-Based Care? 🤔
At its core, Measurement-Based Care is as straightforward as it gets: it's the practice of informing clinical care on patient data collected throughout treatment. MBC has been a medical mainstay for decades (maybe even centuries). Imagine attempting to treat a patient’s diabetes without tracking their A1c, managing rheumatoid arthritis without gathering a RASS, or prescribing and titrating an ACE inhibitor without measuring serial blood pressures! Think of MBC as the GPS guiding the mental health treatment journey, offering real-time feedback and allowing for course corrections as needed. 🚗💨
But why is it such a game-changer? Well, in the complex world of mental health, where symptoms are often subjective, and progress can be as unpredictable as Ohio’s weather in spring, MBC offers a clear, data-driven path forward. It's about moving beyond the ‘How do you feel’ to ‘Let’s see how you’ve been doing’ using quantitative data points. And as we’ve written about before, our field has generally been amongst the slowest to adopt and uptake new technologies and tools. 📊
The Benefits of MBC: A Clearer Picture 🌟
The beauty of MBC lies in its simplicity and effectiveness. By routinely measuring symptoms with validated tools, clinicians can make informed decisions explicitly tailored to each patient's unique journey. Here are just a few ways MBC is transforming behavioral health care:
1. Enhanced Clinical Outcomes: With MBC, the guesswork in mental health treatment is minimized. Clinicians can better understand what’s working (and what's not), allowing for more personalized care that leads to better outcomes. 🎯
2. Empowered Patients: MBC demystifies the treatment process for patients. By seeing their progress charted over time, patients become active participants in their journey towards remission. It's empowering, motivating, and, frankly, a breath of fresh air for many. 💪
3. Data-Driven Decisions: In the world of healthcare, data is king. MBC ensures that treatment decisions are based on clinical intuition and backed by solid, real-time data. 📈
4. Enabling the Move to Value-Based Care: Behavioral health has historically lagged in adopting value-based models. While this is partly because we mental health clinicians are the most rigid of them all (😅), it’s also driven by the lack of adoption of quantitative measures that can be used to approximate patient outcomes in treatment. Enter MBC to the rescue!
Overcoming Barriers: The Road to Widespread Adoption 🚧
Despite its benefits, the road to widespread adoption of MBC is not without its bumps. Challenges range from logistical issues, like integrating measurement tools into existing workflows without annoying patients with repeated questionnaires to complete, to cultural ones, such as changing how clinicians view and use data in treatment. But, as with any journey worth taking, the obstacles are just opportunities in disguise.
Forward-thinking healthcare organizations and digital health platforms are already paving the way, integrating MBC seamlessly into their care flows and making it easier for clinicians to jump on board (see one example of outcomes here as captured by Bend Health). It's an exciting time, and we're just getting started.
Utilizing MBC Appropriately
While MBC can be a tremendously helpful tool for both clinicians and patients in understanding the trajectory of disease throughout a care journey, it’s also critically important to recognize that MBC is not the end-all-be-all when it comes to measuring outcomes. We can both attest that across the tens of thousands of patients, we’ve cared for over the course of our careers, not a single one came in with a chief complaint of ‘Doc, my PHQ-9 score is just too darn high, and I need your help bringing it down.’
Bluntly speaking, patients don’t care what their standardized scale scores are; they want to feel better and get back to living happy and fulfilling lives. So, let’s all be mindful of how we utilize MBC in our care / practices / care delivery models by ensuring we’re also focused on the other necessary components of a wholesome outcomes-based approach to mental health (including patient-reported outcomes measures).
The Future Is Measured: A Glimpse Ahead 🔮
As we look towards the future, it's clear that MBC is more than just a passing trend —it's a fundamental shift in how we approach mental health care. With technology playing a pivotal role, we're on the cusp of a new era in which mental health treatment is more precise, personalized, and effective than ever before.
So, to our fellow healthcare enthusiasts, we say: keep an eye on MBC. It's not just changing the game; it's redefining it. And for anyone involved in behavioral health, from clinicians to operators to investors, that's something to get excited about. 🎉
Wrapping Up
In the ever-evolving healthcare landscape, Measurement-Based Care stands out as a beacon of progress, guiding us toward a future where mental health treatment is not just a craft but also a science. It’s a journey we’re thrilled to be a part of, and we can't wait to see where it leads.
And there you have it—a dive into the world of Measurement-Based Care. It's about bringing clarity to the complex, data to the subjective, and, most importantly, better outcomes for the patients who need them most. What are your thoughts on MBC? Are you as excited about its potential as we are? Let us know!
As always, stay curious, stay informed, and stay tuned for more insights from Two Docs and a Stack. Until next time, take care and keep measuring! 🌈✨
✌🏽 A + A
To read more about our vision for the Stack, check out our intro post here.
Enjoyed this article (as I do all y'all's thoughts)!
Coming from the non-behavioral world where we routinely were collecting PHQ-9's, a challenge will be how to have coherent and integrated mechanisms to treat deviations from the patient's level. Will we always refer back to the patient's behavioral health provider? Will generalists (and possibly specialists) have time and interest to manage medication titration? Especially as payers start to mandate collection of these measures, we will need folks like y'all to guide us on how to manage these scores.
Second is that while a patient may not say that their PHQ-9 is too high (yet), patients do notice if they've gained weight or if their blood pressure is higher. I think that folks are pretty adaptable as exemplified by those who take a more quantified approach to their health who literally lose sleep over their sub optimal sleep scores from their wearables. I think that as the measures are more wide spread and patients/providers understand the benefits of the measures and interventions, we will see patients asking for about changes in their scores.