Benefits

Polaris-MH is intended to help providers perform all functions required for continuous quality improvement: initial patient evaluation, determination of medical necessity for treatment, treatment planning, monitoring of patient progress and satisfaction. Specifically, it provides information about:

1) Whether treatment is medically necessary
2) The severity and nature of the patient’s symptoms
3) The impact of the patient’s problems upon his/her life functioning
4) The focus (objectives) of treatment
5) The presence of co-morbid conditions: chemical dependency, psychosis, and bipolar disorder
6) Presence of critical conditions (e.g., suicidality, psychosis, violence )
7) Patient progress
8) Patient satisfaction with treatment
9) Patient’s perception of the therapist (“therapeutic bond”)

Polaris-MH produces clinically actionable reports for individual patients, severity adjusted aggregate (program level) data for continuous quality improvement and valid comparisons of program outcomes.

Polaris-MH provides benefits to all treatment stakeholders:

Patients

• Receive effective treatment, appropriate to their condition
• Are encouraged by objective evidence of progress
• Improve more rapidly
• Feel greater respect for their therapist, greater satisfaction with treatment

Counselors

• Receive support for treatment planning and monitoring
• Can discuss reports with patients to motivate, and to strengthen rapport/”bond”
• Are helped to determine whether treatment is “working”
• Are alerted to patient deficits, strengths and co-morbid or critical conditions
• Can “prescribe” a full Update at any time during treatment to obtain current information
• May have less paperwork due to the availability of reports for the clinical record

Office staff

• Require little training to use system software
• Experience a negligible increase in their work load
• Are provided with software tools for the efficient management of data collection

Program managers/administrators

• Can use reports for counselor training/development, or for supervision - clinical supervisors can quickly review their supervisee’s caseloads to identify problematic cases for review
• Obtain standardized, reliable, severity adjusted outcomes data
• Are helped to identify counselors’ strengths and weaknesses (e.g., for staff development, differential referral)
• May use the system as the foundation for meaningful CQI initiatives
• May use aggregate data to respond to payers, accreditation requirements, and for proposals

Payers

• Can enhance, and reduce the staff time required for utilization review
• Receive standardized and clinically relevant information about program performance
• Are able to document the quality of the care that they purchase