This book provides therapists guidance on choosing the best outcomes- tracking methods and instruments. It explains how to integrate them into everyday clinical procedures and use the data they supply to improve the quality of care and comply with insurance and regulatory agency requirements. Both intraclient and normative approaches are described. Case studies illustrate how to perform and document outcomes assessment. Wiger is a practicing psychologist. Solberg teaches at the Minnesota School of Professional Psychology. Annotation copyrighted by Book News Inc., Portland, OR.

Mental Health Outcome Measures provides an authoritative review of measurement scales currently available to assess the outcomes of mental health service intervention. The excerpt of summaries by leading writers in the field assess the contributions of scale in areas including mental state examination, quality of life, patient satisfaction, needs assessments, measurement of service cost, global functioning scales, and social disability. These chapters provide a critical appraisal of how far such scales have been shown to be reliable and valid, and provide valuable insights in to their ease of use. This book will provide an invaluable reference manual for those who want to take research on mental health services, and for those who need to interpret this research for policy, planning, and clinical practice.

THE COMPLETE PSYCHOTHERAPY TREATMENT PLANNER Of Related interest Arthur E. Jongsma, Jr. and L. Mark Peterson This valuable guide provides a thorough introduction to treatment planning and contains all of the necessary elements for developing formal treatment plans. In an easy-reference, prewritten format, this book presents detailed problem definitions, treatment goals, objectives, therapeutic interventions, and DSM-IVTM diagnoses for over thirty common clinical problems. Practitioners in the field will find this book to be a great time-saver and an invaluable reference. 1995 (0-471-11738-2) 176 pp. THERASCRIBETM FOR WINDOWS(r) The Computerized Assistant to Psychotherapy Treatment Planning. Arthur E. Jongsma, Jr., L. Mark Peterson, and Kenneth Jongsma. This revolutionary computerized treatment planning software lets you create detailed, customized treatment plans easily and quickly. Designed for use in both inpatient and outpatient settings, its user-friendly format allows clinicians to easily access a wide variety of behavioral definitions, treatment goals and objectives, therapeutic interventions, and DSM-IV diagnoses from its huge database. Its well-organized reports are designed to meet the requirements of Medicare, HMOs, and other third-party payers, which makes this program an important tool for evaluating and treating mental illness. 1997 (0-471-18415-2) 4 3.5 disks THE COMPLETE GUIDE TO MANAGED BEHAVIORAL HEALTHCARE Edited by Chris E. Stout and Gerald A. Theis Managed care has radically altered the mental health services landscape. This loose-leaf style reference manual, which is updated semiannually, offers in-depth analysis from leading experts of changes in practice management, quality and outcome issues, technology, and automation. It also addresses important legal, regulatory, fiscal, and contractual concerns. Packed with practical tools and useful sample forms, the Guide includes a comprehensive glossary of managed care terms and a complete list of managed care organizations. 1996 (0-471-12586-5) 324 pp. THE MEASUREMENT & MANAGEMENT OF CLINICAL OUTCOMES IN MENTAL HEALTH Once used almost exclusively by psychotherapy researchers, clinical outcomes testing is quickly becoming a standard component of mental health practice. JCAHO has mandated that outcomes must be included in mental health record keeping by the end of the decade, and the six largest managed care firms have announced plans to begin tracking clinical outcomes. While debates over the potential advantages and disadvantages of this move rage on, the fact remains that all clinicians in managed care systems will soon be compelled to incorporate outcomes assessment into their clinical routines. The Measurement and Management of Clinical Outcomes in Mental Health prepares clinicians and administrators for this inevitability. Written by a team of experts with extensive experience in design and implementation, this timely book explores the rationale behind outcomes measurement and offers readers concrete advice and guidelines on conducting accurate and effective outcomes measurement. In the first half of the book, the authors review the conceptual and practical aspects of outcomes management. Among the issues receiving special attention are: the psychometrics of outcomes; measuring patient satisfaction; implementation strategies; the role of consumer characteristics in outcomes management, especially in regard to needs-based planning; case-mix adjustment strategies; and barriers to implementation and strategies for overcoming them. The second half of the book is devoted entirely to detailed case examples. Over the course of five chapters, the authors vividly illustrate their approaches to outcomes management in five different specialty areas—outpatient psychotherapy, acute psychiatric services, community services, child and adolescent services, and substance-abuse treatment services. The first comprehensive guide to designing and implementing outcomes evaluation systems, The Measurement and Management of Clinical Outcomes in Mental Health is an important resource for all mental health practitioners as well as mental health and managed care administrators.

Bringing together treatment and referral advice from existing guidelines, this text aims to improve access to services and recognition of common mental health disorders in adults and provide advice on the principles that need to be adopted to develop appropriate referral and local care pathways.

Managed care has produced dramatic changes in the treatment of mental health and substance abuse problems, known as behavioral health. Managing Managed Care offers an urgently needed assessment of managed care for behavioral health and a framework for purchasing, delivering, and ensuring the quality of behavioral health care. It presents the first objective analysis of the powerful multimillion-dollar accreditation industry and the key accrediting organizations. Managing Managed Care draws evidence-based conclusions about the effectiveness of behavioral health treatments and makes recommendations that address consumer protections, quality improvements, structure and financing, roles of public and private participants, inclusion of special populations, and ethical issues. The volume discusses trends in managed behavioral health care, highlighting the emerging role of the purchaser. The committee explores problems of overlap and fragmentation in the delivery of behavioral health care and discusses the issue of access, a special concern when private systems are restricted and public systems overburdened. Highly applicable to the larger health care system, this volume will be of particular interest to all stakeholders in behavioral healthâ€"federal and state policymakers, public and private purchasers, health care providers and administrators, consumers and consumer advocates, accrediting organizations, and health services researchers.

Many Americans believe that people who lack health insurance somehow get the care they really need. Care Without Coverage examines the real consequences for adults who lack health insurance. The study presents findings in the areas of prevention and screening, cancer, chronic illness, hospital-based care, and general health status. The committee looked at the consequences of being uninsured for people suffering from cancer, diabetes, HIV infection and AIDS, heart and kidney disease, mental illness, traumatic injuries, and heart attacks. It focused on the roughly 30 million-one in seven-working-age Americans without health insurance. This group does not include the population over 65 that is covered by Medicare or the nearly 10 million children who are uninsured in this country. The main findings of the report are that working-age Americans without health insurance are more likely to receive too little medical care and receive it too late; be sicker and die sooner; and receive poorer care when they are in the hospital, even for acute situations like a motor vehicle crash.

Approximately 4 million U.S. service members took part in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Shortly after troops started returning from their deployments, some active-duty service members and veterans began experiencing mental health problems. Given the stressors associated with war, it is not surprising that some service members developed such mental health conditions as posttraumatic stress disorder, depression, and substance use disorder. Subsequent epidemiologic studies conducted on military and veteran populations that served in the operations in Afghanistan and Iraq provided scientific evidence that those who fought were in fact being diagnosed with mental illnesses and experiencing mental healthâ€"related outcomesâ€"in particular, suicideâ€"at a higher rate than the general population. This report provides a comprehensive assessment of the quality, capacity, and access to mental health care services for veterans who served in the Armed Forces in Operation Enduring Freedom/Operation Iraqi Freedom/Operation New Dawn. It includes an analysis of not only the quality and capacity of mental health care services within the Department of Veterans Affairs, but also barriers faced by patients in utilizing those services.