Viewing Outcome Measures in Progress Notes

Role Required: Clinician

In TherapyNotes, you can easily review outcome measures in progress notes (including Psychiatry Progress notes) by seamlessly integrating Outcome Measures. Clinicians can include scores from different time frames--baseline, most recent, and prior--and display results showing improvement, decline, or stability.

Information Displayed for Each Outcome Measure

Clinicians can add the following scores to track and display the progress of their patient scores for the following periods:

Baseline: The date/score of initial submission (completed by the patient, regardless of status for processing by practice) during the current episode of care.
Most Recent: Date/score of most recent submission (other than baseline) before the end of the session described in the note.
NOTE: This is only applicable if an outcome measure has been submitted two or more times.
Prior: Date/score before the most recent; therefore, is only applicable if an outcome measure has been submitted three or more times.

Episode of Care

An episode of care refers to a course of treatment that concludes with a Termination Note.

A baseline is determined as follows:

If the patient has a Termination Note in their chart, the baseline is the first submission of a specific Outcome Measure following the date of the Termination Note.
If the patient does not have a Termination Note in their chart, the baseline is the first-ever submission of that Outcome

In many cases, the baseline date and score correspond to the first time the patient completes the outcome measure.

Note: In some cases, a patient may have previously been treated at the practice (with outcome measures completed during their course of treatment), subsequently ending with a termination note. If the same patient returns for a NEW episode of care, the previous episode of care’s Outcome Measures will not be included.

Understanding Results

Note: If an outcome measure is completed after the session’s time frame, the outcome measure results will not display in that session’s progress notes.

The results section will display the category in which the total score falls into the scoring table.

For outcome measures, including a total score, the results will display the category under which the score falls when applicable.

For outcome measures without a total score, a dialog will display, “This measure does not produce a single total score.”

For Outcome Measures that do not produce a score, you will see a dialog that displays “This measure does not produce a score.”

Quick Tip: Outcome measures, including multiple subscales, will display all subscales and associated scores.

Trending Icons

The trending icons indicate changes in in results category from baseline.
Trending icons are triangular arrows. The arrows indicate the direction of score movement (up or down).
Green arrows signify improvements or positive change and suggest clinically beneficial trends.

Orange arrows indicate decline or negative change and suggest clinically detrimental trends.

Note: Outcome measures with numerical scores but no results categories will not display results or trending information. If you want to learn more about results categories, you can find them listed for applicable outcome measures in the library preview or completed view results section for a given outcome measure.

Option Menu

The options menu to the right will allow clinicians to customize which outcome measures results to display for their patients.

This options menu also allows clinicians to select which periods, including baseline only, baseline and most recent, or baseline plus two most recent, for all completed outcome measures the patient has in their chart.

To configure your options menu:

Click on the Options menu at the top.
You can filter the scores for Baseonline Only, Baseline + Most Recent, Baseline + 2 Most Recent. You can also select specific Outcome Measure(s) to be displayed in the progress notes.

Last Configuration

The last configuration is the configuration that is saved to display the configuration of the outcome measures section on progress notes for each patient from their clinician.

This includes which outcome measures were displayed, which periods were displayed and what the order of the outcome measures were sorted using the up/down arrows and/or options menu in each outcome measure card.

To configure the outcome measures, select the up or down arrows to move them.

Creating a New Note:

The last configuration is the configuration from the most recent signed progress note by the same clinician for the same patient.

Note: Most Recent refers to the therapy session with the clinician, NOT the most recent signature.

When Editing a Note:

The last configuration that was used in the most recent saved revision of that note.

Any New Outcome Measure:

Any new outcome measures added to the patient’s chart will appear at the top of the list of outcome measures in any progress note they appear in.

Editing/Viewing a Note

In edit mode of a progress note, clinicians can customize the outcome measures section by moving individual outcome measure cards

If all outcome measures are deleted the progress note, the section will display, “If you would like to add outcome measure scores to this note, you may use the Options menu. If there is no data added, this section will not be included in the completed note.”

However, no information will be displayed if a patient has no completed outcome measures in his or her chart. The section will display, “There is no outcome measure data to display. This section will not be included in the completed note.”

View Mode

View mode refers to when a note is saved and is no longer in edit mode. View mode will look different as outcome measure cards will no longer feature a grey background and the options menu will no longer be visible as notes are not editable in this state.