Designing Technologies for Value-based Mental Healthcare: Centering Clinicians' Perspectives on Outcomes Data Specification, Collection, and Use
Daniel A. Adler, Yuewen Yang, Thalia Viranda, Anna R. Van Meter, Emma Elizabeth McGinty, Tanzeem Choudhury
TL;DR
The paper addresses how HITs can store, collect, and use outcomes data in value-based mental healthcare by interviewing 30 U.S.-based mental health clinicians. It identifies three design levers—preparation (data types), collection (burden and data sources), and action (joint accountability and risk adjustment)—and argues for functional and engagement outcomes over symptom scales. It proposes federated data infrastructures, dynamic consent, and validated active/passive data to support personalized yet standardized data pipelines across stakeholders. The work highlights the need for multi-stakeholder governance, rigorous risk adjustment, and equitable deployment to ensure HITs improve care without increasing disparities. Overall, the findings offer concrete directions for future HIT design and research to better align payer, provider, and social-service data needs with patient-centered care in VBC settings.
Abstract
Health information technologies are transforming how mental healthcare is paid for through value-based care programs, which tie payment to data quantifying care outcomes. But, it is unclear what outcomes data these technologies should store, how to engage users in data collection, and how outcomes data can improve care. Given these challenges, we conducted interviews with 30 U.S.-based mental health clinicians to explore the design space of health information technologies that support outcomes data specification, collection, and use in value-based mental healthcare. Our findings center clinicians' perspectives on aligning outcomes data for payment programs and care; opportunities for health technologies and personal devices to improve data collection; and considerations for using outcomes data to hold stakeholders including clinicians, health insurers, and social services financially accountable in value-based mental healthcare. We conclude with implications for future research designing and developing technologies supporting value-based care across stakeholders involved with mental health service delivery.