Reinventing Measurement-Based Care
Symptom-Rating Scales: Systematic & Digitized
The necessity of including symptom rating scales in monitoring mental healthcare is paramount.
Just as a physician treating a patient with hypertension measures a patient’s progress by monitoring their blood pressure, measurement-based care with symptom-rating scales helps healthcare providers determine whether or not the patient is benefiting from the prescribed mental health treatment through algorithms and clearly defined biomarkers.
Ellipsas’ platform enables mental health providers to connect with their patients between each appointment, generating reliable data on their mental well-being through comprehensive, digital symptom-rating scales.
Through these systematic touch-points, providers are able to provide custom calibrated care by mapping patients’ mental health progress. Each time the patient fills out their symptom-rating scale, the results are calibrated and added to the patients profile chart which is visually displayed through a continuously updated trending chart.
Ellipsas’ Platform
Step 1
Patient Mental Health Appointment & Ellipsas Enrollment
Patients visit with their mental health provider and a treatment plan is created. During the visit, the provider explains the benefits of completing symptom-rating scales, the patient is enrolled in Ellipsas’ mental health wellness plan.
Step 2
Between-Visit Symptom-Rating Scales
15 days after every visit with their provider, Ellipsas automatically sends the patient an email & text message with easy-to-use access to complete a comprehensive, digital symptom-rating scale.
Step 3
Clinical Team Review & Patient Check-In
The results of the assessments are reviewed by the patient’s clinical care team and discussed with the patient through a pre-scheduled phone call to provide feedback on whether the patients progress.
Improved Patient Outcomes
Effective Treatment Monitoring.
Patient monitoring through symptom rating scales between and prior to appointments provides highly reliable mental-health trending biomarkers and an effective way to focus on symptoms identified by the patient as most severe. (1)
Accurate Symptom Data.
Patients who routinely complete symptom-rating scales requested by their physicians on a bi-weekly basis provide more accurate data, as patients tend to respond based on their short-term memory of the prior three to seven days.(2)
Critical Patient Identification.
By efficiently connecting with patients on their mental health progress between appointments, providers are better able to intervene at critical points by identifying patients who may need to be seen immediately for a modified treatment plan.(1)
Increased Patient Engagement
Increased Patient Engagement
By providing key data at critical points in recover, symptom-rating scales enable patients to play an active role in their treatment & become involved in the clinical decision-making process which helps them feel more optimistic, hopeful & adherent.(3)
Increased Patient Awareness
Reviewing the trending of their mental health biomarker with providers validates the way patients are feeling, can ameliorate their self-blame, helps them better understand their disorders, their triggers & fluctuations in their symptom severity.(4)
Increased Patient Trust in Providers
Patients who regularly complete symptom-rating scales requested by their providers tend to have increased trust in the clinical judgement and commitment of their health team (5) & miss fewer mental health appointments.
Optimized Practice Profitability
Significant Additional Revenue.
Leveraging systematic, digital symptom rating scales provides practices with a cost-effective way to bill CPT codes, resulting in significant additional revenue, & demonstrated improved patient outcomes empowers practices to re-negotiate reimbursements and allocations for mental health disorders.(6)
Increased Practice Efficiency.
Leveraging streamlined digital solutions eliminates the time a providers and clinic staff spend contacting patients to obtain their mental health information, manually computing data, reviewing historical paperwork & manually entering data into the EHR.
Professional Development & Efficient Supervision of Clinicians
Individual and population level reporting features empower supervising physicians to efficiently check in on the progress of all patients in the practice and offer professional development(6) & assistance to clinicians facing challenging cases.
Decreased Hospitalizations & ER Visits
Continuous Patient Monitoring
Systematic & automated touch points ensure the mental-health progress of patients is continuously, efficiently and effectively being monitored, during and between provider visits.
Critical Patient Identification & Alerts
Through continuous monitoring, at-risk patients are proactively identified & an alert is triggered to health providers. Critical patients are provided instructions to seek immediate help.
Intra-Disciplinary Care Collaboration
Ellipsas’ platform provides multiple providers access to patient mental-health data and treatment plans, promoting streamlined communication, & unified treatment support.
1. Zimmerman M, Adler DA, Berlant J, et al.: Depressed patients’ acceptance of the use of self-administered scales to measure outcome in clinical practice. Ann Clin Psychiatry 20:125-9, 2008.
2. Stone AA, Shiffman S, Schwartz JE, et al. Patient non-compliance with paper diaries. BMJ2002;325:1193–4.
3. Eisen SV, Dickey B, Sederer LI: A self-report symptom and problem rating scale to increase inpatients’ involvement in treatment. Psychiatric Serv (Washington, DC) 51: 349-53, 2000.
4. Valenstein M, Adler DA, Berlant J, et al.: Implementing standardized assessments in clinical care: now’s the time. Psychiatric Serv (Washington, DC) 60:1372-5, 2009
7. Dorwick C, Leydon GM, McBride A, et al.: Patients’ and doctors’ views on depression severity questionnaires incentivized in UK quality and outcome framework: qualitative study. Bmj 338:b663, 2009.
6. Scott K, Lewis CC: Using measurement-based care to enhance any treatment. Cognitive and behavioral practice 22:49-59, 2015.