A Novel Approach to Delivering Evidence-based, High-quality Care in Psychiatry Through an Electronic Integrated Care Pathway (eICP) Pilot.

Integrated care pathways (ICPs) are evidence-based decision support tools intended to reduce variation and improve quality of care. Historically, adoption of ICPs has been difficult to measure, as the pathways were outside of the electronic health record (EHR), where care delivery documentation and orders were completed. This Technology Column describes the innovative development and implementation of a diagnosis specific electronic ICP that directly embeds pathway steps into an EHR to facilitate order sets, clinical decision-making, and usage tracking. The pathway was implemented at a seven-hospital academic medical center, and details the technology, team structure, early adoption results, and future directions. As such, the importance of investing and organizing resources to create an eICP (e.g., time, technology, and specialized teams) to provide a user-friendly experience to support early adoption is underscored. Preliminary findings show that the eICP had consistent use in the first year of implementation. This manuscript is intended to serve as a practical guide to build eICPs within behavioral health service areas across institutions.

Demystifying treatment disposition patterns for psychiatrically high-risk youth referred for intensive outpatient psychiatric services: The role of demographics and telehealth.

Intensive outpatient (IOP) psychiatric treatment is increasingly deployed to meet the needs of psychiatrically high-risk youth; however, documentation of treatment disposition for in-person and/or telehealth modalities following treatment referral is largely unknown. The current study examined psychiatrically high-risk youth baseline treatment disposition patterns and explored variations according to treatment modality (telehealth vs. in-person). Using archival records of 744 adolescents (Mage = 14.91, SD = 1.60) admitted to a psychiatric IOP, multinomial logistic regressions revealed that commercially insured youth fared better than non-commercially insured youth with respect to treatment completion. When treatment modality was accounted for, youth treated on telehealth were no more likely to be psychiatrically hospitalized compared to youth treated with in-person services. However, youth treated on telehealth dropped out due to excessive absences or withdrawal/refusal to a greater extent than those treated in person. Future studies should examine clinical outcomes in addition to treatment disposition patterns to further understand youth's course of treatment at intermediate level of care settings (e.g., IOP).