Outcomes management, expected treatment response, and severity-adjusted provider profiling in outpatient psychotherapy

Abstract

To make use of psychotherapy research in practice, therapists need real-time access to valid clinically relevant information about patients. The dose-effect and phase models of psychotherapy provide a theoretical background for empirically based psychotherapy management by describing the systematic nature of progress in therapy and guiding the selection of outcome criteria. Given this theoretical background, it is possible to derive appropriate models for monitoring cases in ongoing therapies (patient profiling) and identifying therapists' relative strengths and weaknesses (severity-adjusted provider profiling). These applied methods may be used to inform decision making in ongoing psychotherapies and to support supervision and clinical training.