PROVIDERS AND PAYORS: HOW POLARIS SOLUTIONS CAN HELP YOU

While consumers are receiving more effective services and seeing improved outcomes, providers and payors are also benefiting. Here we give examples of how the measurement of severity-adjusted clinical outcomes and patient satisfaction, which any of the Polaris products can do, will help you improve service delivery.

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This chart shows actual outcomes for 12 chemical dependency programs ("sites"). Treatment results for each patient are compared to a severity-adjusted "expected" outcome, which takes into consideration the patient's initial severity, length of treatment, motivation, treatment history and other factors. For each site, the percentage of patients that achieved the expected progress is charted, providing valid "apples-to-apples" comparisons of performance across the region.

Purpose of the chart: To enable managers to identify unusually effective programs or programs whose performance is sub-par.

Some "messages" from this chart: After taking into consideration the variation among patients' clinical severity, motivation, treatment history and so on, patients at sites A and B achieve unusually strong clinical gains In comparison to other programs in the region. Patients at sites J and K make progress that is very slightly sub-par in relation to the region as a whole, while those at site L achieve exceptionally poor clinical outcomes.

Why this is important for Quality Improvement: Some of the policies, practices or staff training at the strong sites are likely transferable to the weak sites. A QI initiative can use these data to establish goals for improvement, and to evaluate the impact of the initiative in relation to system-wide benchmarks for “average” levels of clinical outcomes and to the baseline level at each program.


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This chart shows patient satisfaction with treatment. There were six response options: Very Satisfied, Satisfied, Mildly Satisfied, Mildly Dissatisfied, Dissatisfied and Very Dissatisfied. The chart shows the percent of patients who responded “Very Satisfied” and “Satisfied”.

Both patient satisfaction and clinical outcomes are important to our clients, but a patient’s satisfaction is not dependent upon clinical outcomes. Overall satisfaction of patients in behavioral health treatment is often 75-85 percent. The percent of “very satisfied” patients is a useful indicator because it shows more cross-site variation than overall satisfaction

Purpose of the chart: Enable managers to identify sites that are unusually strong or weak

Some “messages” from this chart:
✔ Strong sites: 1, 4 and 6-10 are unusually strong on overall satisfaction and percent “very satisfied”
✔ Weak sites: 2, 3 and 11 have extremely low percentages of “very satisfied” patients, despite overall satisfaction rates that are comparable to the other sites. These would not have been identified as weak based upon overall satisfaction. Sites 13-15 are sub-par on both measures of satisfaction.

Why this is important for Quality Improvement: Some of the policies, practices or staff training at the strong sites are likely linked to patient satisfaction, and transferable to the weak sites. A QI initiative can use these data to establish goals for improvement, and to evaluate the impact of the initiative in relation to system-wide benchmarks for “average” levels of satisfaction, and in relation to the baseline level at each program.

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