Is It Time for Clinicians to Routinely Track Patient Outcome? A Meta-Analysis.

Empirically supported psychotherapies, treatment guidelines, best practices, and treatment manuals are methods proposed to enhance treatment outcomes in routine practice. Patient-focused research systems provide a compatible and contrasting methodology. Such systems monitor and feed back information about a patient's progress during psychotherapy for the purpose of enhancing outcomes. A meta-analytic review of three large-scale studies is summarized and suggests that formally monitoring patient progress has a significant impact on clients who show a poor initial response to treatment. Implementation of this feedback system reduced deterioration by 4% to 8% and increased positive outcomes. Our interpretation of these results suggests that it may be time for clinicians routinely and formally to monitor patient treatment response.