As your organization expands and serves more clients, it’s essential to maintain a consistent quality of care. A measurement-based care strategy provides a promising solution to help your staff deliver effective, personalized treatment. As the industry shifts to value-based care, adopting this approach is key for sustainable growth. Discover what a measurement-based care strategy looks like for growing organizations.
What Is Measurement-Based Care?
Measurement-based care (MBC) is a client-centered approach that uses client-reported data to guide clinical decisions. It is a continuous, collaborative cycle with four key steps:
- Measure: MBC starts with collecting standardized information from your client. At the beginning of care and at regular intervals thereafter, they will complete a questionnaire about their symptoms and overall well-being.
- Share: You will review results with the client using metrics and graphs. You can review the numbers and discuss them with your client.
- Act: If the client is improving, continue the current treatment plan. However, if no improvements were seen, you may need to adjust the treatment.
- Repeat: This cycle is repeated throughout the course of the treatment. Tracking scores over time can help you and your client quickly identify when a change in the treatment plan is needed.
Why a Scalable MBC Strategy Is Crucial for Growth
MBC is a fundamental pillar for sustainable growth. Here are several reasons why your organization needs one.
Transitions Care From Subjective to Data-Driven
As an organization grows, maintaining a consistent quality of care across various providers becomes a challenge. An MBC strategy helps standardize the definition of “success.” It ensures your approach to delivering care is measurable and consistent.
Boosts Client Hope
For many clients, especially in behavioral health, the subjective feeling of progress can be slow to emerge. An MBC strategy helps you offer clients concrete evidence of their progress. As clinical professor Ajeng Puspitasari, PhD, noted, clients often struggle with big feelings and fail to acknowledge their progress.
“But if we use measures that look at more than just symptoms, we can say, ‘OK, maybe your depression is not going down, but look at how far you’ve come in your ability to manage symptoms, to be mindful, to regulate your emotions,’” Puspitasari says. This kind of input can provide clients who feel hopeless with peace of mind.
Creates Significant Operational Efficiencies
Growth often leads to operational complexity and increased administrative cost. A scalable MBC strategy, when powered by an automation platform like Mend, can help streamline workflows. With this tool, you can automate the collection and integration of client-reported data, freeing your staff from time-consuming manual tasks.
What Does a Scalable Measurement-Based Care Strategy Look Like for Growing Organizations?
Discover the main pillars for creating an MBC strategy that will remain successful for years.
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Standardized Measurement Tools
Administering validated, evidence-based measures, such as the PHQ-9 for depression, helps standardize your results. It also lets you analyze outcomes at a macro level, compare the effectiveness of different programs and speak a common language when discussing client progress. -
Automated Data Collection Process
One of the biggest barriers to successful MBC is the administrative burden of manual data collection. A robust platform like Mend is the ultimate solution, which allows you to “automate your check-in workflow, so you can start visits on time with everything you need.”
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Integrated Data Into the Clinical Workflow
Collected data must be woven directly into the electronic health record (EHR). As your organization grows, the EHR becomes the main source for client information. Embedding MBC data helps ensure that every provider has access to the client’s history and progress, promoting better turnover and continuity of care. -
Empowered Team
Technology is the vehicle, and your clinical team is the driver. As you hire more professionals, make sure to implement a consistent training protocol to ensure care is implemented uniformly. That way, you can focus on what matters — interpreting MBC data and using it to facilitate more meaningful conversations with clients.
Overcoming Common Barriers to Scaling MBC With Mend
Here are the common challenges to scaling MBC and how Mend can solve them.
Technological Hurdles
When data is siloed, your staff cannot easily see a client’s progress over time, compare results or make informed decisions at the point of care. Mend acts as the central hub that connects the clinical record with the client experience. It creates a unified workflow, integrating with major EHR systems and sending the information as discrete data.
Increased Provider and Staff Burden
Without automation, MBC can generate significant administrative work. Staff have to manually send reminders, analyze completed forms and upload them to the EHR. Mend’s AI assistant, Emma, acts as your clinical coordinator and can handle tasks like scheduling, rescheduling and virtual visit technical support.
Low Client Engagement
The success of an MBC strategy depends on a continuous stream of client-reported data. If clients find the process too difficult or confusing, your organization may not reap the benefits. Mend can send clients a direct link to the form via email or SMS, allowing hassle-free access.
Frequently Asked Questions
Learn more about measurement-based care before implementing it into your organization.
Do You Need to Replace the Current EHR to Implement an MBC Strategy?
Not necessarily. Leading software platforms like Mend are designed to integrate with existing EHRs, not replace them. This is helpful for firms that have already invested heavily in their current system.
Can You Pilot an MBC Program in One Department Before a Full-Scale Rollout?
Yes. Many customers find a phased approach effective in managing change and measuring impact before committing to an organization-wide initiative. It also allows your staff to identify challenges and secure stakeholder buy-in, ensuring a more sustainable adoption.
Implement a Successful Measurement-Based Care Program With Mend
Mend can handle the heavy lifting of a scalable MBC strategy for a growing organization, providing automation features and a user-friendly design. Adopting it is a commitment to building a more resilient, accountable and effective workplace that is equipped for the future of health care.