Treatment outcome and continuous quality improvement: two aspects of program evaluation.

Increasingly, various stakeholders from insurance companies to patients are demanding verification of treatment effectiveness. With this pressure for accountability, program evaluation is essential to the continued existence of psychiatric hospitals because it permits understanding the effects specific interventions or procedures have on the quality and effectiveness of care. Two inpatient aspects of program evaluation are treatment outcome and continuous quality improvement. This article describes the conceptual bases of both treatment outcome and continuous quality improvement, depicts their complementary characteristics, and suggests how these two aspects of program evaluation can be integrated.