| |
AUTOMATED
MENTAL HEALTH SCREENING TOOL CAN IMPROVE PATIENT CARE AND CONTROL
COSTS
QPD Panel Saves Time
For Doctors: It is Self-Administered and Can Diagnose Nine Psychiatric
Disorders in Six Minutes
November 11,
2002
DENVER — Approximately 60% of patients with mental
disorders seek treatment from primary care physicians but many physicians
don’t have time to do adequate assessments. Now an enhanced version of a
hand-held psychiatric screening computer, the Quick PsychoDiagnositic
Panel (QPD) made by Digital Diagnostics, is available for physicians and
healthcare professionals to use to streamline patient intake and identify
common mental disorders quickly and efficiently. The QPD Panel is also
able to track a patient’s progress using a web-based secure database.
This user-friendly mental health test can be self-administered in
a doctor’s waiting room in approximately six minutes. Physicians
immediately receive a computer-generated report that resembles a familiar
blood chemistries report. By providing healthcare professionals with this
timesaving tool, patients will be more likely to receive better care from
their primary physicians and appropriate mental health referrals.
According to a report by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force
released in May, 2002, five to nine percent of adult patients in primary
care settings suffer from depression and up to half go untreated, costing
the economy $17 billion in lost workdays each year. “Physicians are
already overburdened and work under tremendous time pressure,” said
Jonathan Shedler, Ph.D., founder of Digital Diagnostics, Inc., a
psychological assessment company. “Other mental health screening tests
have been available for years, but none gained real physician acceptance.
From interviews and focus groups with physicians, I’ve learned that the
tests are too cumbersome and time consuming for regular use.”
The
QPD Panel screens for depression and eight other psychiatric disorders. It
also screens for suicide risk. The QPD panel is administered on portable,
hand-held computer units about the size of a book. Patients respond to
true-false questions on a video screen. Internal logic allows the test to
probe in greater or lesser detail, depending on responses to earlier
questions. Healthy patients are not asked irrelevant questions, and
patients with disorders are examined more thoroughly. The questions
require only a grade school reading level.
A “lab report” is
printed as soon as the QPD Panel is put on a docking station and provides
numerical scores that measure the severity of a patient’s symptoms. With
out-of-range scores that signal clinically significant disturbances, a
note indicates whether the patient meets the DSM-IV criteria for a
psychiatric diagnosis, and the physician gets a list of the symptoms
contributing to the diagnosis.
The test should be administered
annually to all patients as part of a routine checkup, and should be
administered quarterly (or more often) to patients with mental health
problems to track progress and assess a treatment’s effectiveness.
Quantifying and tracking behavioral health findings enables detection of
under-diagnosed conditions, promotes access to appropriate healthcare
services, and improves compliance and treatment outcomes.
Physicians should incur no costs for using the test. QPD Panel
administrations are reimbursable under CPT code 96100 (for psychological
testing).
Elizabeth Monroe, CEO of Digital Diagnostics, believes
every adult should be screened for mental disorders. Digital Diagnostics
is offering a 30-day free trial to qualified physicians and healthcare
organizations, so providers can see the advantages of the QPD Panel for
themselves.
Dr. Shedler is one of the leading national
researchers in the field of psychological assessment, and has authored
over 25 articles in medical and psychological journals. He is an Associate
Professor at the University of Denver, and has served on the Adelphi
University psychology faculty and the Harvard Medical School psychiatry
faculty. He is currently Co-Principal Investigator of two major research
projects funded by grants from the National Institute of Mental Health.
For the past 14 years, Dr. Shedler has also worked as a clinical
psychologist treating hundreds of patients with a variety of psychiatric
disorders. He is currently licensed in Colorado.
For
information visit www.DigitalDiagnostics.com
# #
# For more information contact Elizabeth Monroe at
800.559.9885
email emonroe@digitaldiagnostics.com
|
igital Diagnostics inc |
address: 11102 Cooper Drive, Littleton, CO 80127 | phone: 800.559.9885 | email: getinfo
digitaldiagnostics.com
