Results of treatment one year later: child and adolescent partial hospitalization

One criticism of academicians is that they evaluate and disseminate outcome studies based more on the value and merit of the research design than on the utility of the findings for improving clinical practice. Increasing pressure on programs to evaluate the effectiveness of behavioral health care is transitioning outcome measurement from the exclusive domain of the researcher toward the clinical/organizational domain. To explore the multiple applications of such clinical outcome data, this article presents the results from a study of 114 patients completing treatment in two child and adolescent partial hospital programs.

Four areas define the scope of clinical outcome measurement pertinent to partial hospitalization: changes in the patient's clinical status, changes in the patient's level of daily functioning, impact on the utilization of behavioral health services after discharge, and patient/family satisfaction with treatment. Using these four domains, this study compares data assessed at admission and at 1 year postdischarge.

Analyses used paired t tests primarily to measure change between admission and 1 year after discharge. Overall, the data show improvement in general functioning that remains evident up to 1 year postdischarge.

Finding positive results in specific areas emphasized therapeutically--such as family functioning and use of community-based mental health resources after discharge, and the parent's attribution of improvement to experiences in treatment--provides justification for relating improvement to the treatment episode.