Lessons learned while integrating patient-reported outcomes in a Psychiatric Hospital

In today's world of smart-device monitoring systems, clinicians may be lulled into the assumption that we can download software to monitor our patients' psychological and behavioral functioning with little or no effort or follow-up. This belief is as erroneous as it is tempting; in fact, implementing effective and efficient systems for utilizing patient-reported outcomes (PROs) in daily practice and research takes a virtual village of stakeholders, clinicians, developers, analysts, and clinical researchers. Here, we describe the iterative processes required for designing, implementing, and updating a large-scale inpatient psychiatric quality improvement/research platform that provides real-time feedback to clinicians and patients. During the past 10 years, many surprises and counterintuitive discoveries have emerged from this project, not the least of which is how difficult it is to establish and maintain "buy-in" and the utilization of PROs with busy clinicians and administrators. Methods for prioritizing and structuring data for different uses, including examining the effectiveness of treatment programs, identifying moderators of change, and improving treatment planning by developing algorithms to alert clinicians to adverse outcomes, are highlighted. The authors conclude by describing a new venture to integrate biological data and between-visit PROs monitoring to enhance well-being and reduce emergency department and hospital admissions for high-risk patients.