Removing very low-performing therapists: A simulation of performance-based retention in psychotherapy.

ABSTRACT: Therapists can impact the likelihood a given patient will benefit from psychotherapy. However, therapists are rarely held accountable for their patients' outcomes. As a result, low-performing providers likely continue to practice alongside providers with high response rates. In the current study, we conducted a Monte Carlo simulation to illustrate a thought experiment-what happens to patient outcomes if therapists with the worst outcomes were removed from practice? We drew initial samples of 50 therapists from 3 simulated populations of 1,000 therapists with a mean patient response rate of 50% and different effect sizes for therapist variability in outcomes. We simulated 30 patient outcomes for each therapist, with outcome defined as response to treatment versus no response. We removed the

SUBMITTER: Imel ZE 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5032628 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature