Deploying a telemedicine collaborative care intervention for posttraumatic stress disorder in the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs: A stepped wedge evaluation of an adaptive implementation strategy.

Fortney JC, Rajan S, Reisinger HS, Moeckli J, Nolan JP, Wong ES, Rise P, Petrova VV, Sayre GG, Pyne JM, Grubaugh A, Simsek-Duran F, Grubbs KM, Morland LA, Felker B, Schnurr PP. Deploying a telemedicine collaborative care intervention for posttraumatic stress disorder in the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs: A stepped wedge evaluation of an adaptive implementation strategy. General hospital psychiatry. 2022 Mar 26; 77:109-117.

Dimensions for VA is a web-based tool available to VA staff that enables detailed searches of published research and research projects.

If you have VA-Intranet access, click here for more information vaww.hsrd.research.va.gov/dimensions/

VA staff not currently on the VA network can access Dimensions by registering for an account using their VA email address.    Search Dimensions for VA for this citation
* Don't have VA-internal network access or a VA email address? Try searching the free-to-the-public version of Dimensions

Search for Abstract from PubMed

---

Abstract:

OBJECTIVE: To address barriers to trauma-focused psychotherapy for veterans with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), we compared two implementation strategies to promote the deployment of telemedicine collaborative care. METHOD: We conducted a Hybrid Type III Effectiveness Implementation trial at six VA medical centers and their 12 affiliated Community Based Outpatient Clinics. The trial used a stepped wedge design and an adaptive implementation strategy that started with standard implementation, followed by enhanced implementation for VA medical centers that did not achieve the performance benchmark. Implementation outcomes for the 544 veterans sampled from the larger population targeted by the intervention were assessed from chart review (care management enrollment and receipt of trauma-focused psychotherapy) and telephone survey (perceived access and PTSD symptoms) after each implementation phase. The primary outcome was enrollment in care management. RESULTS: There was no significant difference between standard implementation and enhanced implementation on any of the implementation outcomes. 41.6% of sampled veterans had a care manager encounter, but only 6.0% engaged in trauma-focused psychotherapy. CONCLUSIONS: While telemedicine collaborative care was shown to be effective at engaging veterans in trauma-focused psychotherapy in a randomized controlled trial, neither standard nor enhanced implementation strategies were sufficient to support successful deployment into routine care. TRIAL REGISTRATION: ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT02737098.