Essentials of Treatment Planning by Mark E. Maruish

Author:Mark E. Maruish
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
ISBN: 9781119533344
Publisher: Wiley
Published: 2019-10-09T00:00:00+00:00

What to Include in the Treatment Plan

Armed with an assessment-based case formulation and being mindful of the general considerations just discussed, the clinician is prepared to develop a formal plan for treatment of the patient. In this context, formal plan refers to a written document of specific areas of patient-related information that serves multiple purposes. The potential uses of the formal treatment plan range from being a therapeutic contract for ensuring that both the clinician and patient agree on particulars such as the what, how, and duration of treatment; to serving as a road map to be referred to when the direction of treatment becomes unclear; to being a vehicle for requesting authorization for services from the patient’s insurer; to helping to protect the clinician from unwarranted litigation that may be brought against him or her at a later date.

Following is a discussion of the recommended content for a formal treatment plan (also see Rapid Reference 5.3), which probably should be considered the “ideal” for a formal plan. Some clinicians may not find it necessary to develop a written treatment plan to include all of the content described, opting instead for an abbreviated or otherwise modified version of it. Other clinicians may never develop such a formalized document at all, either as described in Rapid Reference 5.3 or in any modified form. This may be because they see no real need for such a document (e.g., the clinician sees all patients only 2–3 times for crisis resolution); they feel that they can develop and maintain a treatment plan “in their head”; third-party payers do not require it; or, frankly, they do not provide good clinical care. Regardless, having a written treatment plan of some form that is mutually agreeable to both the patient and the clinician should be considered a standard of care for all behavioral health care professions.

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