What is a Patient Registry?
The patient registry is a system that collects each patient’s data in a uniform manner to observe and examine the factors contributing to a specific outcome. This patient registry is an essential tool in collaborative care. Used in collaboration with the electronic health record, the registry acts as a centralized tool for the care team to review and manage the personalized patient caseload.
Within the perinatal collaborative care model, the care manager primarily takes on the responsibility to oversee this registry. This includes tracking changes to each patient's treatment plan, monitoring patient progress and outcomes, and measuring each patient’s quality of care. The Meadows Mental Health Policy Institute Collaborative Care Model Patient Registry highlights key components of a patient registry. Some of these components are emphasized below.
The patient registry must:
- Track clinical outcomes and progress at the individual and overall caseload level.
- Facilitate measurement-based treatment - identify those who are not improving and prioritize treatment adjustment or psychiatric case reviews.
- Facilitate efficient psychiatric caseload review - identify new patients, those at risk of falling out of care, or those who need to be evaluated for additional changes to treatment plan.
What to keep in mind when designing or choosing a platform to be your registry?
- Think about what type of registry tool you'd like to use. For example, the electronic health record, REDCap, or an excel sheet. Consider software that is HIPAA and GDPR compliant and protects patient confidentiality.
- Identify the purpose of your registry and consider selecting data elements that relevant to the purpose.
- You may also want to consider the software's ability to generate reports. This may look like software that has the ability to quickly identify new screening results and identify which patients are not responding to treatment.
- The patient registry should be easily accessible and include a user-friendly interface for data entry and retrieval.
- Consider how you would like to communicate with your patients. Feedback from the COMPASS+ Community Action and Advisory Board highlighted the importance of creating a patient facing registry which includes the functionality to communicate scores back to the patient within the platform.