Quality management for psychotherapists

Abstract

Understanding quality concepts and methods will help psychotherapists to asses and improve the outcomes of their services. Quality is well defined in service and industry through international norms like ISO-9000, and in health care by expert panels like the institute of medicine’s 1990 definition. Both industry and health care quality concepts focus on fulfillment of customers demands and societal expectations of goods and services. Quality concepts emerged out of industrial quality inspection at the beginning of our century, turned into quality assurance later on and have engulfed into today’s quality management. In congruence with the Institute’s of Medicine quality definition, outcome quality in psychotherapy can be defined as the likelihood of improvements of individu-al health statuses of clients. The improvement of indi-vidual health status should be measurable at least in 5 dimensions: biological, body functional, mental (psychological), social and well-being. Outcomes of Psychotherapy gets increasingly attention by individual clients and society as psychotherapy is regulated by law in Austria and reimbursed far all ill inhabitants since 1991. Psychotherapists are obliged to society to show the effectiveness of their services by external quality assurance. Internal quality management should help psychotherapists to improve the structures, the processes, and the outcomes of their care in all farms of institutional settings, ranging from single practises to hospital based psychotherapy.

Keywords:
Psychotherapy, quality of health care, total quality management, quality of life, treatment outcome.
(These keywords are standard subject headings of the National Library of Medicine’s Thesaurus)