Evaluation of implementation facilitation integrated into a national mentoring programme to improve access to evidence-based psychotherapy for post-traumatic stress disorder within the veterans health administration: a quality improvement report

Despite the resources dedicated to specialised mental healthcare for patients with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) within the US Veterans Health Administration, evidence-based psychotherapies (EBPs) for PTSD have been underutilised, as evidenced by low EBP reach to patients. A research-operation collaboration evaluated whether implementation facilitation delivered by regional PTSD mentors as part of a national mentoring programme improved EBP reach compared with less-intensive quality improvement interventions. We used a non-equivalent comparison-group design that included all PTSD clinics with low EBP reach at baseline (n=51). Clinics were grouped into one of four quality improvement conditions according to self-selection by regional PTSD mentors: facilitation (n=6), learning collaborative (n=15), mentoring as usual in the regions that had facilitation-target clinics (n=15) and mentoring as usual in other regions (n=15). The primary outcome was EBP reach among therapy patients with PTSD at preintervention baseline and postintervention sustainment periods. We used the ratio of odds ratios (ROR) between the two time periods to evaluate the effectiveness of facilitation compared with the other conditions, adjusting for patient-level and clinic-level confounders. 26 126 veterans with PTSD received psychotherapy in one of 51 low-reach PTSD clinics during preintervention baseline and postintervention sustainment periods. The odds of a patient receiving an EBP increased over time across conditions. The adjusted ORs of a patient receiving an EBP from baseline to sustainment were 1.35-1.69 times larger in clinics that received facilitation compared with the three comparison conditions (adjusted RORs of comparison condition versus facilitation ranged from 0.59 (95% CI 0.47 to 0.75) to 0.74 (95% CI 0.58 to 0.94)). Implementation facilitation can be integrated into a national programme for quality improvement for PTSD specialty care and may be particularly useful when less-intensive approaches are not sufficiently effective.