Columbus Park Outcomes 2018

2018 was a remarkable year for Columbus Park.  We’d like to share results pulled from our outcomes database to give you a sense of our hard work last year.

Columbus Park was ranked #1 out of 98 other feedback-informed outpatient behavioral health treatment centers.

As you may know, we use a brief but robust standardized questionnaire that tracks symptoms weekly throughout the course of treatment.  Our questionnaires, distributed by ACORN (A Collaborative Outcomes Resource Network), are designed specifically for eating disorder patients.  Columbus Park data is compared against ACORN’s database of over 1,000,000 cases and against other centers utilizing ACORN’s system.

Columbus Park’s effect size (magnitude of change) for 2018 was 1.1 which is an extraordinary feat by any standard.

ACORN uses multivariate statistics to calculate projected change and what’s called the severity adjusted effect size.  Essentially, effect size is a measure of the magnitude - or size - of the treatment effect. ACORN Criteria for Effectiveness (ACE) pegs 0.5 effect size as the threshold for "effective" treatment and .8 as the threshold for “highly effective” treatment.  An effect size of 1.1 is obviously more than twice the standard for effective treatment.

In 2018, Columbus Park patients completed 1,997 questionnaires in 2018. 

We’ve collected A LOT of data on our patients’ progress which speaks to our commitment to: a) monitoring treatment response and tweaking treatment accordingly to ensure the best, most effective treatment for our patients and b) paying close attention to our treatment efficacy to be sure that we’re consistently growing and improving as providers. Of note, our effect size has gone up each year since we started implementing the measure. In 2015 we were at .5 ("effective").

The vast majority of Columbus Park’s patients met criteria for improvement/significant improvement – defined as a measurable lessening of symptoms.

The vast majority of our patients respond to treatment with a measurable lessening of symptoms.  Given the well-documented persistence of eating disorders – many sufferers go in and out of protracted treatments throughout their lifetimes - these results are very encouraging.Feedback Informed TreatmentWhen we started tracking outcomes at Columbus Parkback in 2015, our effect size was in the .5 range.  What we found—which is consistent with the literature1—was that questionnaire completion by every patient at every session, coupled with weekly reviews by clinicians and adjustments to treatment as indicated, resulted in a dramatic improvement in our outcomes.  It makes sense:  measure patient symptoms at treatment onset and along the way and use the feedback to adjust treatment.  With access to ongoing data, we can tweak treatment sooner and more effectively if/when someone is not responding.

Columbus Park is a team of true experts in eating disorders and their co-occurring conditions like depression and anxiety.  We offer treatment to clients of all ages-adults, adolescents and children-and continue to demonstrate our dedication to the field by providing the best in gold-standard treatments.

 1 Goodman, JD, McKay, JR, DePhilippis, D, Progress Monitoring in Mental Health and Addiction Treatment:  A Means of Improving Care, Professional Psychology: Research and Practice 2013, Vol. 44, No. 4, 231–246.