Either counselors produce or we’re all out of work. And it’s best if they help some consumers along the way.
Mary Ann Vassallo, CFO of Family & Children’s Agency on Long Island advised me of a different focus on a big question of the moment: “What is best for the client?…All we talk about now (is) how many units of service should be required for each fte. Is 1100 a year right, not enough, 1500 too many?”
I quested for data.
We used the hot dog cart approach in one of my past lives: If you’re going to make a profit on hot dogs, you need to know how much it costs to deliver a hot dog that people will like enough to bring friends back for more. Cost of treatment analysis in a big agency can get pretty granular:
There’s more, but enough already. We’re busy people who want the short, easy answer so we can get to work on solutions. From what I’ve seen, there is no easy, short answer, so I went in search of an expert in the matter. What should I find on The National Council’s website, but David Lloyd’s MTM Services’ productivity calculator. Eureka, I thought!
David Lloyd’s thought is that the EHR is key to enhancing productivity and measurable outcomes, which has been EHR software manufacturers claim for many years. I’m a fan. His organizations’ recent work in Ohio, Massachusetts and New York has been influential and exemplary.
Then I saw CEO Michael Flora’s accompanying presentation. It’s 76 slides of very exacting description of the revision and implementation of best practices throughout his Ben Gordon Institute.
As I suspected, still, there’s no easy, short answer.
The approach is nothing new, an extension of discovering how much it costs to put a hot dog out the window to a happy customer. The actions Michael Flora explained to NCCBH were basic, proven business principles, and they can be replicated at other agencies to show dramatic business improvements…answering important questions like Ms Vassallo’s.
One business improvement is the ability to measure treatment outcomes by analyzing services rendered and continuous results of various treatment instruments. Creating your own agency benchmarks for treatment outcomes seems to be the answer to what’s best for the client.
Start a project. You could ask how treatments and their associated instruments used in your agency are working to improve depression outcomes. If you have an EHR in use, existing data can measure improvements for different conditions. What are the key variables?
An EHR will usually have these elements recorded for as long as you’ve been effectively using it. Writing a report should be a simple matter.
If you don’t have an EHR, you may want to make that a priority for the agency.
In either case, studies like this have a lot to say about improving agency efficiency and improving treatment quality. A key reason studies like this don’t get done is that qualified people are usually busy people, so the reasonable and sensible approach may be to hire somebody for the project.
Contact me any time.
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