Routine Outcome Assessment Research Articles

Training in routine mental health outcome assessment: the Victorian experience.

The routine assessment of client outcomes was set as an objective in the Australian National Mental Health Policy in 1992. Victoria was the first jurisdiction to begin the implementation. This paper reports this process, and describes the background to outcome measurement in mental health, assembly of the implementation team, certain key concepts, development of the training materials, the approach to training, and a brief description of the evaluation. We end with a number of observations and recommendations that arose out of the project.

Reliability and reproducibility of a Chinese-language visual function assessment

OBJECTIVE The purpose of the study was to validate a Chinese-language visual function assessment within the context of a routine cataract surgery practice and to assess the contribution of the method of questionnaire administration.DESIGN The visual function assessment (VFA) was translated into Chinese. Two groups of study subjects were recruited: Chinese who did not speak English and Chinese conversant in English. Consecutive preoperative cataract patients of Chinese ancestry presenting to an urban ophthalmology practice were recruited. The questionnaire was administered in person or by telephone interview. Pre-operative visual acuity was recorded. Visual function scores were analyzed to assess reliability and correlation with visual acuity.RESULTS Among the 186 potential study subjects, 155 patients completed the study. The Chinese-language visual function assessment had good internal consistency (Cronbach α = 0.97, inter-item correlations = 0.43 to 0.96). Reliability (with regard to the English version) and test-retest reproducibility of the Chinese questionnaire were strong with intraclass correlation coefficients greater than 0.60. The method of administration contributed to the measures of reliability and reproducibility.CONCLUSION These results show that a Chinese-language version of the VFA questionnaire is reliable and valid. In industrialized countries with large Chinese-speaking populations and newly developed countries of East and Southeast Asia, the visual function assessment may be helpful in assisting routine clinical patient evaluation and cross-cultural outcome assessment programmes. Our findings also suggest that self-administered visual function assessments may be more reliable and valid than interview-generated assessments.

A focus on empirically supported outcomes: A commentary on search for empirically supported treatments.

Psychiatry in Australia has prepared clinical practice guidelines, and in doing so identified empirically supported treatments, but has been loath to implement those guidelines. Clinical psychology, excluded from being reimbursed by health insurance, has shown less interest in systematically identifying such treatments. There is considerable official interest in how to make science inform practice, with comments from the payers that routine outcome assessment would be used in setting reimbursement schedules. Efficacy, effectiveness, and efficiency are popular words, evidence-based medicine is to be adopted by all, but no one is clear about how this will be achieved. Does all this sound familiar?

Psychosocial outcome assessments for use in cardiac rehabilitation service evaluation: a 10-year systematic review

A variety of measures are currently used to assess psychosocial outcome (quality of life) in cardiac rehabilitation programmes. However, there is no consensus on the most appropriate instruments to use. Instruments that are not sufficiently responsive to change in cardiac populations are unsuitable as audit tools as they underrepresent the benefits of programme attendance. To identify the most responsive instruments in cardiac rehabilitation populations a systematic overview of studies for the 10-year period 1986–1995 was conducted. The following databases were searched: Medline, Psychlit, Cinahl and Sociofile and 32 relevant studies were identified. The effect size statistic (a comparison of the magnitude of change to the variability in baseline scores) was used to determine those instruments most responsive to change. The following instruments were identified as being responsive in more than one study: Beck Depression Inventory, Global Mood Scale, Health Complaints Checklist, Heart Patients Psychological Questionnaire and Speilberger State Anxiety Inventory. There is little consensus on psychosocial evaluation instrument use in the cardiac rehabilitation literature. A number of measures show significant potential for routine outcome assessment. Formal assessment of these instruments is recommended to inform final recommendations about instrument selection for audit and evaluation purposes in cardiac rehabilitation.

Routine outcome assessment in mental health research

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Routine Outcome Assessment on a Geiatric Rehabilitation Unit

Routine Outcome Assessment on a Geiatric Rehabilitation Unit