Developing and studying an outcome-focused measure of mental healthcare quality based on patient-reported symptoms in the USA: a study protocol

BMJ Open. 2025 Jul 11;15(7):e105270. doi: 10.1136/bmjopen-2025-105270.

ABSTRACT

INTRODUCTION: Various psychological, cognitive, behavioural, medication and neurostimulation treatments can improve the outcomes of people with depressive and anxiety disorders. However, in usual practice, there is large variability in treatment delivery and treatments are poorly characterised. The effectiveness and quality of mental health services in the community are not accurately monitored and are poorly understood. At present, healthcare organisations, payers and policy makers know little about the quality of care they support. Similarly, patients and families have limited information on quality to guide choice of provider or organisation. It will be necessary to implement monitoring of treatment quality so that treatment and outcomes can be improved. This study develops, tests and validates a new, transdiagnostic outcome-focused mental health quality measure. This measure is based on routine, regular patient reports of their symptoms. It is designed to be aggregated at the provider, clinic, organisation or plan level; inform choice of provider; and be used to improve routine delivery of services and quality of care among patients with common psychiatric disorders.

METHODS AND ANALYSIS: The project analyses existing data with responses to a wide variety of items that are known to assess depression or anxiety and empirically selects symptom items for a transdiagnostic outcome-focused quality measure. The project informs risk adjustment and benchmarking of the quality measure by studying how patient, provider and practice factors, including health-related social needs, baseline symptom severity and diagnoses, affect outcomes. Drawing on these, the project specifies an outcome-focused quality measure that includes risk adjustment and benchmarks for improvement; and studies, at practices nationally, its feasibility and psychometric properties, the effect of treatment characteristics on the quality of care, and the effect of quality on health-related quality of life.

ETHICS AND DISSEMINATION: Results will be published. The quality measure is designed to be broadly relevant across community settings and populations and to be submitted for endorsement by regulatory and governing bodies.

PMID:40645630 | DOI:10.1136/bmjopen-2025-105270