OnTrackNY's Learning Healthcare System

This application proposes OnTrackNY as a regional scientific hub for the Early Psychosis Intervention Network (EPINET) program as part of the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH)'s creation of a national learning health care system (LHS) for early psychosis care. OnTrackNY has grown into a 22-site network, under the leadership of Lisa Dixon, MD, MPH.

Created and supported by the New York State's Office of Mental Health (OMH), OnTrackNY is a nationally recognized model providing coordinated specialty care (CSC) for adolescents and young adults within two years of the onset of non-affective psychosis. OMH regulates and licenses all mental health programs in New York and is a direct-services provider via state-operated programs statewide. This makes OMH an ideal partner for establishing a statewide learning health care system for early psychosis care. Further, OnTrackNY's administration, OnTrackCentral, operates within the OMH-supported Center for Practice Innovations at Columbia Psychiatry. In this model, OnTrackCentral serves as the hub and the 22 OnTrackNY programs serve as the spokes. Since 2014, the still-growing OnTrackNY network has served over 1,600 individuals. From its inception, OnTrackNY has aimed to deliver high-quality, data-driven, accountable and culturally competent care consistent with an LHS. As a condition of funding, all OnTrackNY providers follow established protocols that require submission of patient- and site-level standard measures of early psychosis clinical features, services, and treatment outcomes.

The proposed EPINET regional hub, the OnTrackNY LHS, will emphasize and enhance two critical foundational components - Aim 1: proactively engage stakeholders to optimize understanding of key problems and their solutions at every LHS phase; and Aim 2: develop data systems with enhanced standardized data collection, including post-discharge data and linkages to external data systems, and enhancing data analytics that will allow for client-level treatment planning and prospective analytics, delivering real time, dynamic and actionable information to stakeholders. These LHS components do not follow in a stepwise sequence but instead operate in parallel and interact to facilitate and enhance quality improvement processes. This backbone will support the development of practice-based research.

Study Overview

• Status: Suspended
• Conditions: First Episode Psychosis
• Intervention / Treatment: Other: Stakeholder feedback; Other: Data infrastructure

Detailed Description

This application proposes OnTrackNY as a regional scientific hub for the Early Psychosis Intervention Network (EPINET) program as part of NIMH's creation of a national learning health care system (LHS) for early psychosis care. As a continuation of the NIMH-supported RAISE-Implementation and Evaluation Study, OnTrackNY has grown into the 22-site (and still expanding) network under the leadership of Lisa Dixon, MD, MPH. OnTrackNY is a nationally recognized model for providing CSC for adolescents and young adults within two years of the onset of non-affective psychosis. OnTrackNY sites are located in licensed outpatient clinics at community agencies, state-operated facilities, and community and academic hospitals in urban, suburban, and rural areas throughout New York. This network has served over 1,600 individuals to date, with 451 new enrollees in calendar year 2017. Thanks to its sponsorship by the New York State Office of Mental Health (OMH), OnTrackNY has progressed to meet its goal of providing CSC to any young person with early psychosis in New York State, regardless of ability to pay. OnTrackNY includes OnTrackCentral-the "hub"-a team of nine staff, who provide training and technical assistance to sites and manage data collection, and the 22 teams which are its "spokes." From its inception, OnTrackNY has sought to deliver high-quality, data-driven, accountable care consistent with an LHS. (See Facilities for details on sites.)

The Foundations of a LHS in OnTrackNY: Several factors facilitated OnTrackNY's LHS foundations: 1) OnTrackNY evolved from the data-oriented RAISE-Implementation and Evaluation Study; 2) its location within the Center for Practice Innovations, an OMH-funded and empirically driven technical assistance center for scaling up evidence-based practices housed within Columbia Psychiatry; and 3) a strong commitment by OMH to high quality, accountable care. OnTrackCentral obtains stakeholder input from clinicians, program directors and state administrators. All OnTrackNY teams are contractually obligated to follow established protocols requiring specific service components and standardized client- and site-level measures for treating first episode psychosis (FEP). OnTrackCentral provides ongoing technical assistance to support the model, identify programmatic gaps and problems, and facilitate practice-based learning and research.

The Opportunity for OnTrackNY to Build a Better LHS: EPINET provides the opportunity to leverage the nascent LHS foundations of OnTrackNY and build a large, state-of-the-art LHS for early psychosis care. The investigators propose to expand and restructure the continuous quality improvement (CQI) process to: (Aim 1) include key stakeholders at every phase of the LHS and (Aim 2) provide accurate and appropriate delivery of real-time data to clients and providers to facilitate measurement-based care.

LHS Frameworks and Conceptual Model: This LHS is based on the principles of the Institute of Medicine's (IOM) (now National Academy of Medicine) model for a continuously learning healthcare system which brings together stakeholders to review data and technologies to develop and apply strategies to improve quality and increase efficiency. The investigators will use the IOM's LHS model, operationalizing the components according to the six LHS phases described by the Group Health Cooperative. While this LHS model provides an aspirational roadmap for a cyclic improvement approach, significant knowledge gaps limit translation and implementation of knowledge into evidence-based communications, campaigns, guidelines and other tools, products, and interventions. The investigators will draw on the Knowledge to Action (KTA) framework, which guides knowledge translation and implementation activities within each phase of the LHS model. The KTA planning tool directs knowledge creation and action cycles through questions for stakeholders to consider during each LHS phase. Through an iterative process, knowledge creation begins with stakeholders, data and mixed methods practice- based research during the LHS Scanning and Surveillance phase. The Action Cycle outlines a process, representing the activities needed for knowledge to be implemented in practice. Knowledge is adapted to the local context, and barriers and facilitators to its use are explicitly assessed. Stakeholders are centrally involved in tailoring knowledge and interventions to those who will use it.

This proposal will thus build a stakeholder-driven LHS that will establish the data infrastructure needed to promote measurement-based treatment within a structure supporting continuous quality improvement which, in turn, supports practice-based research-with the overall goal of improving care and outcomes for individuals with early psychosis. This EPINET-supported LHS will create an engine to optimize the potential of CSC to improve the lives of people with schizophrenia.

• Study Type: Observational
• Enrollment (Estimated): 2100

Contacts and Locations

Study Locations

• United States
  • New York
    • New York, New York, United States, 10032
      • OnTrackNY Central

Participation Criteria

Eligibility Criteria

• Ages Eligible for Study: 16 years and older (Child, Adult, Older Adult)
• Accepts Healthy Volunteers: No

• Sampling Method: Non-Probability Sample

Study Population

OnTrackNY participants at an OnTrackNY site (currently 28 sites statewide) or other stakeholders.

Description

Inclusion Criteria:

• OnTrackNY participants are individuals age 16-30 who have experienced non-affective psychoses for less than two years and have enrolled at an OnTrackNY site. Other stakeholders include past OnTrackNY participants, family members, clinicians, administrators, payors and agency leadership.

Exclusion Criteria:

• Not meeting inclusion criteria specified above

Study Plan

How is the study designed?

Number of groups / cohorts

1

Cohorts and Interventions

Group / Cohort

Intervention / Treatment

OnTrackNY LHS Participants and Stakeholders; OnTrackNY participants and stakeholders, including past participants, family members, clinicians, administrators, payors, and state leadership

Other: Stakeholder feedback; Stakeholders, including OnTrackNY participants, past participants, family members, clinicians, administrators, payors and state leadership, will participate in a variety of activities to provide continuous quality improvement to the OnTrackNY program, including a Stakeholder Workgroup, interviews and focus groups; Other: Data infrastructure; Data will be systematically collected as part of CQI activities, within a state-of-the-art data infrastructure that allows for client-level feedback to clients, providers and sites to improve quality of care.

What is the study measuring?

Primary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure	Measure Description	Time Frame
Participation in work and school	Participation in competitive employment and/or degree-based education program, as assessed in OnTrackNY assessment instruments	Up to 5 years
MIRECC GAF occupational, social and symptom functioning	Improvements in occupational, symptom and social functioning, as measured by the MIRECC Global Assessment of Functioning (GAF) scores	Up to 5 years
Hospitalization rates	Decreases in rates of psychiatric hospitalization per quarter, as assessed in OnTrackNY assessment instruments	Up to 5 years

Collaborators and Investigators

• Sponsor: New York State Psychiatric Institute
• Collaborators: National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH); Washington University School of Medicine; New York University; Columbia University
• Investigators: Principal Investigator: Lisa B Dixon, MD, MPH, New York State Psychiatric Institute; Principal Investigator: Iruma Bello, PhD, New York State Psychiatric Institute

Publications and helpful links

General Publications

• Patel SR, Bello I, Cabassa LJ, Nossel IR, Wall MM, Montague E, Rahim R, Mathai CM, Dixon LB. Adapting coordinated specialty care in the post-COVID-19 era: study protocol for an integrative mixed-methods study. Implement Sci Commun. 2021 Jul 5;2(1):72. doi: 10.1186/s43058-021-00178-x.
• Patel S, Bello I, Cabassa LJ, Nossel IR, Wall MM, Montague E, Rahim R, Mathai CM, Dixon LB. Adapting Coordinated Specialty Care in the Post-COVID-19 Era: Study Protocol for an Integrative Mixed-methods Study. Res Sq [Preprint]. 2021 Apr 26:rs.3.rs-452200. doi: 10.21203/rs.3.rs-452200/v1.

Study record dates

Study Major Dates

• Study Start (Actual): August 15, 2019
• Primary Completion (Estimated): December 30, 2026
• Study Completion (Estimated): December 30, 2026

Study Registration Dates

• First Submitted: July 11, 2019
• First Submitted That Met QC Criteria: July 15, 2019
• First Posted (Actual): July 16, 2019

Study Record Updates

• Last Update Posted (Actual): February 4, 2026
• Last Update Submitted That Met QC Criteria: February 2, 2026
• Last Verified: February 1, 2026

More Information

Terms related to this study

• Keywords: Mental disorders; Psychotic disorders; Schizophrenia Spectrum and Other Psychotic Disorders; First Episode Psychosis; Learning Healthcare system; Stakeholders; Data infrastructure
• Additional Relevant MeSH Terms: Schizophrenia Spectrum and Other Psychotic Disorders; Psychotic Disorders; Mental Disorders; Schizophrenia Spectrum and Other Psychotic Disorders
• Other Study ID Numbers: 7840; 5R01MH120597 (U.S. NIH Grant/Contract)

Plan for Individual participant data (IPD)

• Plan to Share Individual Participant Data (IPD)?: NO

Drug and device information, study documents

• Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated drug product: No
• Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated device product: No