Enhancing Engagement by Integrating Goals and Concerns That Matter to Patients

Dartmouth Health (DH) has implemented the evidence-based Collaborative Care Model (CoCM) of integrated behavioral health in primary care.

CoCM includes (a) an initial behavioral health assessment with validated patient-reported outcomes, including the Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9) and Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD-7) scale, (b) joint care planning and treatment with pharmacotherapy and/or psychotherapy, (c) monitoring using a registry to track treatment and patient-reported outcomes, and (d) caseload review with a psychiatric consultant.

There are several limitations associated with CoCM, including loss of patients between referral and treatment, failure to complete CoCM, and a limited ability to monitor for post-treatment relapse in depressive symptoms. These limitations are associated with low motivation to engage in BH services and patient perceptions that providers cannot accommodate their needs.

The scientific premise of the project is that structured collection and use of personalized treatment goals and concerns will improve patient engagement with CoCM, extending service impact. This study will highlight patient priorities for healthcare services to the CoCM team and will overcome clinical translational science challenges associated with patients' goals and concerns being neither fully documented nor available to support care, improvement, and research.

Enhancing patient-generated data collected through CoCM (e.g., PHQ-9; GAD-7) with patients' goals and concerns will reduce barriers to engagement in BH services by overcoming patient perceptions that services are misaligned with needs. Previous studies demonstrate that agenda setting processes that elicit priorities can improve clinicians' understanding of patients' concerns, increase patients' perceptions that what matters most is heard and incorporated into care plans, and increase likelihood of patients adhering to treatment recommendations.