Collect, Share, Act: A Transtheoretical Clinical Model for Doing Measurement-Based Care in Mental Health Treatment

Regardless of discipline or setting, psychotherapists and other professionals working in the field of mental health care share one common goal: For the recipients of care to experience improvements that are meaningful to them. Measurement-based care (MBC) is a transtheoretical clinical process that uses patient-reported outcome measures to monitor treatment progress and to inform treatment planning and goal setting. Though ample evidence supports MBC as enhancing collaboration and improving outcomes, its practice is not the norm. One possible barrier to greater utilization of MBC in routine care is lack of consensus in the literature on what MBC is and how it should be practiced. In this article, we discuss this lack of consensus and detail the model for MBC developed by the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) MBC in Mental Health Initiative. Though it is simple, the VHA Collect, Share, Act model is consistent with the best clinical evidence to date and can serve as a guide for clinicians, health care systems, researchers, and educators. Impact Statement MBC has the potential to improve clinical outcomes, treatment engagement, and collaboration between clients and providers, but the field is limited by lack of consensus about what MBC is and how it should be practiced. We begin to address this problem by describing the Collect, Share, Act model of Measurement-based care (MBC), which mental health providers, educators, and researchers can utilize to immediately inform their work.