A Feasibility Study of the Costs and Benefits of Providing Session by Session Feedback to Therapists of Measures of Patient Symptoms and Process

Project Lead: Professor Mike Lucock

Collaborators: Dr Jeremy Halstead; Professor Chris Leach, South West Yorkshire Partnership NHS Foundation Trust and University of Huddersfield; Michael Barkham, University of Sheffield; Michael Lambert, Brigham Young University, USA; Wolfgang Lutz, University of Trier, Germany

Date: 2011-2013

This study, funded by the NIHR Research for Patient Benefit Programme, investigated the feasibility and acceptability of running a outcomes monitoring and feedback system in routine NHS psychological therapies service.

The system was set up in two services, one operating from a single base, the other a larger, more complex service with a range of bases and with a wider range of therapies, including more group work. It provided enhanced feedback on progress after the 4th therapy session and investigated whether and how clinicians make use of the feedback, what impact feedback had on clinical outcome, particularly for patients not on track.

Feedback was provided to therapists using a traffic light system of red, amber and green reflecting progress and areas of difficulty for the patient. Patients were deemed to be not on track (red) if CORE-10 scores had increased by 5 or more, indicating a statistically reliable deterioration. “Orange” cases had not improved nor deteriorated by more than 5 points and “green” cases had improved by 5 or more points, indicating a reliable improvement.

For further information, please contact Professor Mike Lucock.