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Outcome Management System (PCOMS)

MyOutcomes administers the Web-based application of the Partners for Change Outcome Management System (PCOMS) developed by Barry L. Duncan, Psy.D., and Scott D. Miller, Ph.D. MyOutcomes was launched in 2008 after seven years of development and research.

That same year, they co-authored "Consumer-Driven Outcomes Management: A New Paradigm for Quality Improvement in Behavioral Health," which detailed how empowering consumers to take a more active role in assessing mental healthcare outcomes dramatically improves the quality and efficiency of services. The white paper also called upon the U.S. President and Congress to require consumer-driven outcomes management as a centerpiece in reform of the behavioral health industry.

In 2010, because of three randomized clinical trials demonstrating the power of feedback conducted by researchers at the Heart and Soul of Change Project and published in top tier, peer-reviewed journals, PCOMS was submitted for inclusion in the US Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration's (SAMHSA) National Registry of Evidence-based Programs and Practices (NREPP). After an arduous review that included both a research and the ability to disseminate evaluation, both dissemination versions of PCOMS (Heart and Soul of Change Project and International Center for Clinical Excellence) were accepted in early 2013.

In the spring of 2013, MyOutcomes will release Version 11 of its web based application. Besides streamlining processes and providing advanced graphing and reporting functions, Version 11 will also include new trajectories of change that will more accurately account for clients who need more sessions to achieve clinically significant change. Using the latest in statistical methodology and based on more than 427,000 administrations of the ORS, the 2012 Algorithms developed by Dr. Barry Duncan and his team predict therapy outcomes based on length of service (short term v. longer term therapy encounters), uniquely including a dynamic switch to trajectories applicable to longer term clients, thereby addressing the needs of both clients whose change occurs more slowly and clinicians not working from a brief therapy perspective. Another notable change is to the Reliable Change index, which in all previous publications had remained at 5, but with these newer calculations has changed to 6. Clinicians familiar with the older trajectories will also notice that the slope of change from session one to session three is more gradual now for the short term (1-8 sessions) as well as for the longer term therapy encounters (up to 18 sessions).