Research Projects /
Development and Evaluation of a Registry in a Medical Home Program for People with Serious Mental Illness: Impact on Health and Mental Health Outcomes
The purpose of this research project is to develop and study the impact on medical outcomes of a diabetes registry at two Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHC) serving patients with serious mental illnesses, operated by the University of Illinois (UIC) College of Nursing (CON) in collaboration with Thresholds Psychiatric Rehabilitation Centers. Computerized disease registries are an important tool in systems that integrate physical and mental health care for individuals with chronic diseases. They capture and track important medical information enabling the health care team to effectively manage coordinated, integrated care.
The computerized registry is web-based and contains information that is accessible to patients, medical providers, and mental health staff. Center staff lead development of the registry in collaboration with CON and Thresholds staff. The registry will include patient profiles of individuals needing more intensive medical care, a snapshot of disease outcome indicators updated at each visit, follow-up reminders for needed appointments and treatments, action lists prepared for patients and their case managers, and system level reports regarding the clinics’ adherence to standards of evidence-based diabetes care.
The study uses an interrupted time series design to evaluate the effectiveness of the registry on clinic outcomes such as treatment provision meeting evidence-based care recommendations, patient outcomes that are diabetes-specific, and quality of mental health care coordination by case managers. Depending on their disease status, it is expected that over 220 Thresholds clients will be served by the registry.
Registry data used for this project are de-identified administrative data from the registry itself as well as the two collaborating agency’s electronic medical records systems. In addition, data regarding satisfaction with the registry is being collected via individual interviews and focus groups conducted with consenting patients as well as medical and mental health staff.
