Help Patients Get Better Faster With Progress Monitoring

Dr. Ingrid Carlier’s 2012 meta-analysis of 45 mental health-related clinical trials showed that addiction progress monitoring helped patients get better faster in 65% of the trials, including all three of the addiction treatment studies. Simply put, progress monitoring – tracking how patients are feeling throughout treatment and reporting it to their clinicians in an easy-to-understand way – works.

During the course of monitoring more than 40,000 patients during treatment, we’ve learned that progress monitoring helps patients get better faster for at least four different reasons:

Treating Co-Occurring Disorders: Since people struggling with addiction are often self-medicating with drugs or alcohol to cover up symptoms of depression, anxiety, trauma, psychosis or other mental disorders, appropriate treatment of co-occurring disorders is integral to recovery.

Because Vista is screening patients at intake for a variety of common co-occurring disorders and reporting the results instantly in an easy-to-understand manner, clinicians are able to start treating these underlying conditions immediately. A Vista client treating patients in multiple states estimated that the intake screening identified patients with previously-undiagnosed co-occurring disorders in 30% to 40% of their patients.
Identify Patients Who Are Not Progressing As Expected: Clinicians who are meeting regularly with a patient will tend to assume that the patient is improving steadily over time. Vista’s graphs make it crystal clear when this is not happening so that a change in treatment plan can be considered:
Flag Patients at Higher Risk of Leaving Against Medical Advice: Preliminary research has shown that about 80% of the addiction treatment patients who leave treatment AMA indicate their disengagement from treatment by either:
Vista is in the midst of a comprehensive predictive modeling project that we expect will allow us to alert clinicians to patients at higher risk of leaving AMA in the software shortly.
Submitting substantially fewer update surveys than similar patients at that center
Making few or predominantly negative responses to the open-ended questions on Vista’s update surveys
Continually Improve Treatment: Managers can use Vista’s data analytics platform to analyze 40 different patient-reported metrics by clinician, by program and by time period to identify opportunities to improve treatment. Additionally, Vista provides a 5-week online Performance Improvement Workshop each January to assist clients in using their data to set strategic goals and action plans for the year.

Do you want to join a community of treatment professionals who are fervently committed to providing every patient with the best possible chance of recovering from addiction and/or mental illness? Members of the Vista Research Network use state-of-the-art software to monitor patients during treatment and follow up with them afterwards to learn how effective their treatment was in helping them recover. Not only are clinicians able to use to easily personalize the treatment they provide, but Vista’s trailblazing data analytics platform and comprehensive research reports help owners and managers continually monitor and improve their center’s effectiveness.

Vista Research Group monitors your patients during treatment and follows up with them afterwards so you can help more of your patients recover from addiction.

Once Vista’s research agreement is signed, a 30-minute Implementation Meeting will be scheduled with your leadership team to understand how your center is structured and what data you want to collect. After this meeting, the only additional information Vista will need is a list of users needing access to the software. Vista is usually able to customize the software for a new center within 24 hours of receiving this patient list.

During online training sessions, Vista will explain why progress monitoring helps patients get better faster, demonstrate the key features of the software, discuss best practices, and answer any questions your team has.

Training videos and step-by-step instructions are available in Vista’s private community as well as in a searchable Knowledge Base. Vista also provides live phone and email support seven days a week to answer any questions new users might have.