A look at Outcomes at Prairie St. John’s
During the patient’s stay, he/she is assigned a social worker who works with the patient and their family through the course of their stay. The social worker initiates the patient’s treatment plan. The treatment plan is a tool used to guide the treatment of the patient by the treatment team. The Treatment plan consists of one to four target behaviors or specific problems that the patient and/or family would like to change through treatment. Target behaviors can include, but are not limited to depression, anxiety, substance abuse, self-injurious behavior, attention deficit/hyperactivity, oppositional behavior, etc. Once these target behaviors are established, the patient, family and social worker develop a strategy to aid the patient in reducing the severity of these problems or target behaviors.
In order to measure the amount of progress patients make from admission to discharge, the patient’s social worker asks the patient and/or family to rate the severity of each target behavior/treatment issue at admission and discharge. Target behavior ratings are made in response to the question, “Currently, how severe is this problem?” using a scale of 0 to 4 (0 = not at all, 1 = not much, 2 = somewhat, 3 = a lot, 4 = extremely). Since a patient’s struggles with mental health and addictions can often be very stressful for family members as well, the social worker also asks the family to use the same scale to rate the family’s distress level at admission and discharge.
The HOPE of the measures:
From admission to discharge, patient’s ratings of target behavior severity significantly decrease indicating that the patient has improved considerably over the course of their treatment. (Please see graphs below)
The scale is 0 to 4 (0 = not at all, 1 = not much, 2 = somewhat, 3 = a lot, 4 = extremely)
A paired samples t-test showed a significant difference in average admission and discharge Target behavior ratings for Pediatric patients, t(391) = 38.551, p<.001.
The scale is 0 to 4 (0 = not at all, 1 = not much, 2 = somewhat, 3 = a lot, 4 = extremely)
A paired samples t-test showed a significant difference in average admission and discharge Target behavior ratings for Adult patients, t(370) = 36.033, p<.001.
Average distress ratings of families also decreased considerably from admission to discharge indicating that as patients improve, the family unit also experiences significant relief.
The scale is 0 to 4 (0 = not at all, 1 = not much, 2 = somewhat, 3 = a lot, 4 = extremely)
A paired samples t-test showed a significant difference in average admission and discharge Family Distress ratings for Pediatric patients, t(384) = 23.813, p<.001.
