Assessing Aftercare

• Topics in Outcome Assessment by Ellen A. Dornelas, Ph.D., 9/24/96
  • A Hospital Wide Outcome Evaluation by Ellen Dornelas, 1/17/97
    • Re: Hospital Outcomes Evaluation by Elaine Kersten, Ed.D., 2/6/97
      
      

I wish I had some more time to talk about this, but I will give a quick response for the time being.

Assessing ancillary services is an important part of post-discharge follow-up and it is included on the follow-up questionnaire. We ask about Individual Therapy, Family Therapy, Group Therapy, AA/NA or other support groups, Medication Group, Individual Physician Visits for Psychotropic Meds only, and Other Medical Visits. Each of these items asks the respondent to check the most appropriate response on a (sort of) likert type response set: Not at All, More than Once A Week, Once a Week, Every 2 or 3 Weeks, About Once a Month, About Every 3 Months, Less often than Every Three Months. This kind of response allows for both type of service and can be quantified as well. We also ask about hospitalizations both inpatient and partial programs. For those developing questionnaires, you can help avoid making your data invalid by specifying the reference point for the patient (i.e. this is a 6 month follow-up from the B Unit of Hospital X). If this is not clear to the patient, the researcher will never be sure if the data reported in fact pertain to discharge of interest (sometimes called the index discharge or index admission in the literature). With the advent of data merging, it is possible to pre-print your questionnaires so that it is clear what time period and from what program the follow-up is assessing.

Hope this was clear as a brief response. I will look forward to more discussion soon.

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