Person-Centered Versus Measurement-Based Care in Mental Health

An important attribute of patient-centered care is the active engagement of patients in making health care decisions. Despite advances in health care to support shared decision making, the patient experience of mental health care remains provider-driven. For individuals with serious mental illness (SMI), important decisions involve the choice of medications and how best to use medications to support individualized, person-centered recovery goals. By comparing the effectiveness of two approaches for promoting shared decision making around medication treatment on outcomes that matter most to individuals with SMI, the proposed study will advance ongoing and much-needed efforts to evolve toward a more personalized, recovery-oriented system of mental health care. Building on the work of a multi-stakeholder collaboration, investigators will compare two interventions, Person-Centered Care and Measurement-Based Care, both focused on patient-prescriber interactions around medication treatment. The investigators' study will address three questions that patients have identified as important to them: 1. Are there ways I can be more involved in my care that will result in better outcomes? 2. How likely am I to benefit from improved communication with my prescriber? 3. How will shared decision making support my personal recovery and overall wellness? Study aims will compare the effectiveness of measurement-based vs. person-centered care on the patient experience of care and on shared decision making. Investigators hypothesize that: 1. Person-Centered Care will result in greater improvement in patient experience of care with medication treatment than Measurement-Based Care. 2. Person-Centered Care will result in a greater level of shared decision making during the medication visit than Measurement-Based Care. In addition, investigators will compare the effectiveness of the two approaches on seven secondary patient-centered outcomes, and examine differences in outcomes within the two approaches for subgroups of patients based on their: (1) current status regarding psychiatric medication, (2) engagement with the interventions, and (3) illness severity. The target population is 2,460+ Medicaid-enrolled adults with SMI who receive medication treatment at one of 15 community mental health centers (CMHC). Using a prospective cluster-randomized design with a mixed-methods approach, investigators will randomly assign CMHCs to one of the two interventions. Quantitative (self-report, claims, process) and qualitative (interviews) data will be gathered at multiple time points across the two-year intervention period (baseline, 8 months, 16 months, and 24 months). Multi-level longitudinal analyses will examine the impact of the interventions on outcomes and explore the role of moderating variables. Qualitative data will be used to understand patient and stakeholder perspectives and to promote dissemination and sustainability.