Blueprint Releases U.S.' Largest Report on Anxiety & Depression; Introduces New Data-Driven Benchmarks for Behavioral Health Organizations

New report examines over two million outcome measures from approximately 200,000 patients experiencing anxiety and depression across 2,000 mental health organizations and introduces new benchmark standards of care to improve patient outcomes

CHICAGO, Oct. 11, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Blueprint, the technology platform helping mental health clinicians deliver higher-quality care in less time, today released the first-ever national benchmark standards of care, offering clinicians a roadmap to measure the efficacy of treatment and improve patient outcomes. The Blueprint Quality Index (BQI) provides the industry with transformative insights compiled from over 2.5 million outcome measures from 200,000 patients across more than 2,000 mental health organizations. The BQI is 50 times larger than the most well-known and largest behavioral health clinical study from 2008, STAR*D, making it the most robust, most distributed, and highest-fidelity mental health report in United States history.

"Blueprint exists to empower mental health clinicians with easy-to-use software to make data-informed solutions and provide higher-quality care that helps patients get and stay better," said Danny Freed, founder and CEO at Blueprint. "Our new data and benchmark report on anxiety and depression provides a comprehensive look into the mental health crisis and offers benchmarks for clinicians to measure and implement a higher-quality level of care. Clinicians nationwide will now have a clear roadmap for improving treatment quality to help patients get better and save more lives."

One in five adults, or nearly 58 million Americans, currently live with a mental health condition. Fueled by isolation and trauma from the pandemic, anxiety and depression rates are at an all-time high, yet only 13% of patients with access to care report lasting improvement. The mental health care industry has traditionally lacked technology solutions to track data to measure and improve the effectiveness of treatment over time, forcing clinicians to largely rely on subjective trial-and-error methods. To better address the growing mental health crisis, providers must transition from subjective assessment to higher-quality care that is data-driven and outcomes-focused. 

Blueprint's report found that the quality of care in behavioral health varies widely. An average of two-thirds (66%) of people who begin a 12-week course of outpatient behavioral health services do not reach remission for anxiety or depression. Roughly four out of five patients do not experience any clinically meaningful response to therapy, regardless of their remission status. 

Additional key findings from the report include:

• Approximately 21% of patients experience clinically meaningful improvements in depression symptoms and 24% in anxiety symptoms within 12 weeks of care.
• Only 31% of patients achieve remission for their depression symptoms during outpatient therapy, and 38% experience remission of anxiety symptoms.
• Clinical response to outpatient behavioral health care was greatest among high-severity patients (65% for depression, and 44% for anxiety) and smallest among mild-severity patients (16% for anxiety and depression).

"These data show that access to mental health care is important, but improving the quality of that care is essential to better serve patients. A data-informed national framework for high-quality outpatient behavioral health care is crucial for charting a better path forward," said Antoinette Giedzinska, PhD, director of the Research Institute at Cumberland Heights and author of APA's The Clinician's Handbook on Measurement-Based Care. "I believe Blueprint's benchmarks for care will serve to better support clinicians across the country and, through its Blueprint Quality Index (BQI), promote an effective process towards implementing measurement-based care to help clinicians provide the best care possible for their patients."

A critical next step in improving patient outcomes is aligning on what high-quality care looks like and how to measure effectiveness across a wide range of organizations, populations, treatment settings, and more. To help establish a widely accepted standard, Blueprint developed the industry's first set of benchmarks to provide higher-quality care, the BQI, based on its data findings. By ranking organizations on a scale (0-100) for anxiety and depression outcomes, the goal of the BQI is to create transparent standards for clinicians and behavioral health care organizations to improve communication, comparison, and patient outcomes nationwide. The BQI is based on a commonly used healthcare benchmarking method, referred to as Achievable Benchmarks of Care (ABCs), which derives a standard of excellence based on existing data from top performers in a given peer group.

"Demand for mental health care continues to skyrocket and clinicians need measurement-based tools to ensure treatment is actually creating lasting patient improvement," said Melissa Bartholomew, LMHC, owner of mental health practice Brighter Bound. "As someone who has seen the effectiveness of Blueprint's benchmark program firsthand, I view these benchmarks as an essential tool in helping me achieve the best clinical outcomes with my clients and fully support and encourage the industry-wide adoption of these standards. For the first time, my fellow clinicians have a roadmap to create more personalized treatment plans that will help patients get better, faster."

Blueprint tackles the status quo through software that provides data-driven insights to help clinicians inform their work and improve patient outcomes. Patients have the ability to share honest feedback and perspectives about their therapeutic sessions, and these findings give their clinician a "blueprint" to help inform their future treatment. Patients using Blueprint respond to treatment up to 44 percent faster compared to conventional mental health services.

For clinicians, Blueprint:

• Automates administrative tasks, saving up to two hours per week on manual data entry.
• Offers suggested session plans to surface the most important changes and events since the last session.
• Provides in-session guidance to deliver the right evidence-based interventions.
• Drives a 25 percent reduction in no-shows and cancellations.

For patients, Blueprint:

• Makes treatment efficient, saving time and money with better health outcomes.
• Provides progress tracking across symptoms, sleep, exercise, and treatment goals.
• Offers therapeutic homework and quick assignments for continuous progress.
• Gives easier access to crisis resources in times of need.

As insurance companies move toward performance-based payment structures, small to midsize organizations who historically struggle to adopt enterprise-relevant quality measures may be able to use the BQI in the future as a more scalable and equitable measure of quality outcomes. By systematically measuring patient outcomes and collectively adopting a culture of transparency and improvement, the mental health industry can make great strides in achieving true parity with the broader healthcare landscape and gain recognition for the life-changing treatments that are delivered on a daily basis.

Approximately 10,000 clinicians across 50 states are using Blueprint's platform, creating one of the world's largest multimodal mental healthcare datasets equating to 10 million days of information. Blueprint will release a new anxiety and depression data and benchmark report annually to capture the latest industry data and provide up-to-date recommendations.

For more on Blueprint and its anxiety and depression data and benchmark report, please visit: https://resources.blueprint-health.com/blueprint-quality-index-2023.

About Blueprint
Blueprint is a technology platform that helps mental health clinicians provide the highest-quality care and improve outcomes for patients. Blueprint's solution is used to monitor patients between sessions and generate a data-driven "blueprint" for clinicians at the point of care to help inform treatment decisions. Thousands of clinicians across the country use Blueprint to generate better outcomes more quickly for hundreds of thousands of patients. Based in Chicago, Illinois, the company has raised $14 million in total funding to date. To learn more, visit: https://www.blueprint-health.com/.

SOURCE Blueprint