MIDAS Project Publication Abstracts
Posternak, M.A., Zimmerman, M. & Solomon, D.A. Integrating outcomes
research into clinical practice: A pilot study. Psychiatric Services,
in press.
Objective: This study describes how brief outcomes rating
assessments can be incorporated into routine clinical practice. Method:
A cohort of 102 psychiatric outpatients with major depressive disorder
were prospectively followed for up to 2 years. Outcome ratings were
obtained at each "medication management" follow-up visit using
two independent measures of symptomatology. Survival analytic techniques
were used to depict the time to improvement and time to recovery in this
cohort. A comparison with the results of the NIMH Collaborative Depression
Study (CDS) was used to confirm the validity of our findings. Results:
The two outcome ratings took less than 1 minute to perform and were easily
incorporated into 15-minute "medication management" visits. We
found that over 95% of the sample had achieved sustained improvement by
the end of 2 years of treatment, while 79% had achieved a full remission
of symptoms in that time. These results were remarkably similar to the
findings reported in the CDS. Conclusions: Brief and meaningful
outcome ratings can be incorporated into routine clinical practice. The
potential uses of these ratings, both for clinical and research
applications, are discussed.
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