Outcome Assessment Project: Western Mass

• Topics in Outcome Assessment by Ellen A. Dornelas, Ph.D., 9/24/96
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    • More on the Outcome Assessment Project in Massachusetts by Ellen Dornelas,Ph.D., 1/24/97
      
      

I am pleased to share this project with you. I appreciate both your interest and your questions. The questions really make me think about some of the areas that require detailed focus.

The evaluation model used for developing this outcomes project does appear to be fairly comprehensive. I presented it to a group of residential providers in Boston. Unfortunately, they felt that project was too "researchy" and what they wanted was something more "quick and dirty" so to speak. They basically wanted to satisfy managed care with some easy outcomes data, and not worry so much about a true outcomes study.

I find this attitude sad, since a slim outcomes study really does not provide the clinical insights that agencies and services need to understand the extent to which services are making the difference to clients.

In this project, the data is already beginning to yield some exciting insights, and this just with the basic descriptive and cross-tab analysis (basic analysis of the association between categorical variables). We are preparing a full day direct care symposium to share the initial results with the staff of each of the thirteen sites of the services. There are approximately 95 to 100 clients who are part of the service, ranging in age from 19 to 63 years of age for the clients who are part of the study (geriatric clients are not part of the study). The sites include: a support to independent living model - serving about 1/3 of the clients; 24 hour staffed sites; and staffed apartments where staff have an office that is centrally located.

There are two major groups: those that have been in service prior to 12/15/97; those new clients admitted from 12/15/97 on. The second group is the true "outcome" group, since we will be testing/assessing them from the point of entry into treatment, and can associate change with service.

Follow-up is critical, and we will be following clients for two years post rx, using many of the same measures to determine maitenance of individual gains in outcomes, health and emotional status. Intervals of post rx assessments will be every six months. Clients re-admitted once they graduate are treated as new clients. No readmissions occur before six months, so this is a realistic approach.

I think that I will stop here, as I realize this has gotten quite long. I invite any questions and appreciate critical comments, as well.

I will follow up with the data analysis part of the question separately. You probably want some detail of the description of the analysis performed, as well as some of the plain language (jargon free) rational for the choices. so i will try to be clear in this part of the project description.

• correction to Western Mass outcomes Project by Elaine Kersten, Ed.D., 2/5/97
  • Western Mass... by Ellen Dornelas, 2/13/97
• Outcome Assmt in Residential Tx by Ellen Dornelas, 2/14/97