Foundry Used Digital Empathy Surveys to Support Youth, increasing efficiency and quality of responses from youth.

Problem

Operated by Providence Health, Foundry is a wellness center that provides primary care and outreach services for youth in British Columbia.

Foundry was initially developed as an Inner City Youth (ICY) progarm, a prototype site and multi-disciplinary resource for the provision of mental health care and support for youth in the greater Vancouver area. In the early stage of its development, the team at Foundry struggled to keep youth engaged while manually completing a long survey in one sitting. The need for comprehensive information on each of the clients being crucial, the health survey combined the Global Appraisal of Individual Needs Short Screener (GAIN-SS) and HEADSSS psychosocial assessment. Additionally, the stigma associated with mental health made it difficult for youth to share sensitive information with the ‘interviewer’ , skewing the quality of the data and hindering the clinician’s ability to make better care decisions. In the pursuit of a solution that would provide a more complete and accurate data for detecting risky behaviors objectively, Foundry partnered with Tickit Health to implement a youth-friendly, psychosocial survey on a digital platform, Tickit.

The Solution & Impact

The team at Tickit Health leveraged its expertise and digital platform, Tickit, to design a pre-appointment survey to capture self-reported information from youth as well as a post appointment survey to evaluate the impact of a digital survey on the care experience they received.

Tickit’s interactive face – characterized by pictograms, engaging colors and icons – increased youth engagement and reduced response biases, resulting in higher self-disclosure of stigmatized behaviors. Amongst the youth, 72% reported feeling comfortable answering the questions about their mental health & wellbeing, 65% felt that the Tickit platform was very easy to use and 63% understood the questions very easily. The higher acceptability and usability of Tickit survey amongst the respondents enabled clinicians to get more accurate identification of at-risk youth and efficiently allocate limited clinical and allied health professional resources in supporting the youth.

Additionally, Tickit’s Population Management Module generated real-time reports, profiling youth’s psychosocial functioning in the form of an assessment summary, high-risk alerts, and aggregate responses for staff to review prior to the clinical encounter. With Tickit’s use, clinicians were able to identify and address mental health and substance abuse problems earlier and provide effective interventions. In the followup staff interview evaluating the impact of Tickit, 80% of the Foundry staff reported that information generated from Tickit’s Population Management Module were very useful and 79% felt that care encounters were more efficient than when using simple text and paper-based surveys.

The pilot project was researched and published after peer review, the results of which can be viewed here.

Conclusion

The Tickit approach to capturing person-reported data improved the quality of responses from youth and thus the efficient delivery of care.

Capturing each individual’s unique information based on an empathetic approach, Tickit enabled clinicians to similarly demonstrate greater empathy and engagement during care encounters while reducing time devoted to the entire process. Both patients and staff reported high preparedness for their appointment as well as better understanding of health concerns during the appointment.

Started as a pilot site, Inner City Youth Program has now rebranded itself to Foundry and expanded its services all across British Columbia by opening eight new centres.