Brief Battery for Health Improvement 2

The BBHI™ 2 test was developed to accompany the more comprehensive BHI 2 test. Drawing from the same norm group and five overlapping scales, the BBHI 2 offers a quick and concise way to track progress once the BHI 2 test has been administered. The BBHI 2 test can also be used for a short initial assessment.

The BBHI 2 test was developed help medical professionals assess the important mind/body connection for their patients. Derived from the well-researched, widely used BHI™ (Battery for Health Improvement) test, the shorter BBHI 2 instrument helps practitioners quickly evaluate for a number of psychomedical factors commonly seen in medical patients, such as pain, somatic, and functional complaints – as well as traditional psychological concerns such as depression, anxiety and patient defensiveness.

The information provided by the BBHI 2 test can help practitioners obtain a quick yet comprehensive overview of the patient to help in treatment planning and in determining whether the patient may need a more in-depth evaluation by a psychologist.

How to use the BBHI-2

The BBHI 2 test can be used in a wide variety of settings, including:

• As part of the initial evaluation
• Throughout the course of treatment to track patient progress
• Before and after:
  • Surgery
  • Diagnostic injections
  • Multidisciplinary pain program
  • Medication trials
  • Rehabilitation programs
  • Chiropractic adjustments
  • Physical therapy
• To help medical evaluators provide reliable, objective information regarding:
  • Cases involving occupational and auto injuries
  • Social security and disability evaluations
  • Workers' compensation cases 

Key Features

The BBHI 2 assessment provides objective information and practical treatment strategies to physicians who treat patients in a variety of settings.

Taking only 7–10 minutes to administer, the BBHI 2 test:

• Provides a single instrument to help measure a variety of pain-related issues, including level of pain, functionality, and emotional distress.
• Uses a nationally standardised 0–10 pain scale, which assesses multiple dimensions of the pain experience, including level of pain in 10 body areas, pain tolerance, pain range, and peak pain.
• Efficiently assess patients to develop appropriate treatment plans and determine whether further psychological evaluation is needed.
• Includes validity checks. The Defensiveness Scale can help detect tendencies to minimise or magnify distress, while the inclusion of a validity item helps detect random responding.

Benefits

• Easy to administer, quick results
  Administering and getting results of the BBHI 2 is efficient and quick, and it’s simple to integrate into your assessment protocol. The Q-global® software allows you to score assessments, produce reports, store the results, and export data for further analysis.
• Uncover key symptoms
  The BBHI 2 computerized report includes an analysis of a patient’s responses in the following areas:

The BBHI 2 report also highlights risk factors based on patient responses to 17 critical items, which address areas such as:

• Satisfaction with care
• Compensation focus
• Problems at home
• Suicidal ideation
• Chemical dependency
• Psychosis

• Significant benefits for both patient and clinician
  BBHI 2 can have a significant impact on you and your patients. The test can help:
  • Identify risk factors: Objectively assesses factors that might affect treatment
  • Document treatment readiness: Mitigates risk and helps meet insurance documentation requirements for medical treatment
  • Make treatment decisions: Recommends possible approaches to treatment
  • Validate clinical judgment: Offers objective perspective on your patient’s situation
  • Determine the need for further psychological evaluation: Helps identify the need for psychological treatment
  • Facilitate successful treatment outcomes: Helps put the patient and clinician in a position to succeed
  • Illustrate improvement: Demonstrates progress over time
  • Save staff time and resources: Takes 7–10 minutes to administer, and results are returned quickly

Q-global® Administration Options

This product is available on Q-global with the following administration option:

On-Screen Administration (OSA)

Your clients can complete this assessment online through Q-global. Alternatively, your client can complete the assessment in paper-pencil format, and their responses can then be data-entered into Q-global for scoring and report generation. On-Screen Administrations are proctored (supervised) unless specifically indicated.

If you would like more information, please visit the Q-global product page. 

Sample Reports

• BBHI-2 Sample Progress Report
• BBHI-2 Sample Standard Report

Frequently asked questions follow. Click on a question to see the response.

Test Content

What is the BBHI 2 assessment designed to do?

The BBHI 2 assessment is designed to identify factors that may interfere with a patient's normal course of recovery from an injury or chronic pain. The purpose of the BBHI 2 assessment is to provide relevant information and treatment recommendations to professionals who treat injured patients in a variety of settings, including physical rehabilitation, chronic pain, and general medicine.

Administration

When is it appropriate to use the BBHI 2 assessment?

The BBHI 2 assessment is intended to be used by a variety of clinicians and medical specialists, including anesthesiologists, neurologists, occupational therapists, physical therapists, surgeons, rehabilitation specialists, nurses, psychologists, psychiatrists, family physicians, multidisciplinary teams, and other healthcare providers involved in the treatment and care of injured patients. It is appropriate to use the BBHI 2 assessment with patients from 18 to 65 (inclusive) who are currently being treated for an injury or chronic pain. The test should not be used with patients who have serious cognitive impairment. The BBHI 2 assessment is also appropriate as a research instrument.

What are the benefits of having a test normed on rehabilitation/pain patients?

The benefit of having a test normed on rehabilitation/pain patients (rather than on community subjects) is that it reduces the chances of overpathologizing patients. The symptoms of the average patient, which are often labeled "extreme" or "highly problematic" on other tests, are appropriately labeled "average" on the BBHI 2 inventory. By comparing rehabilitation/pain patients to other rehabilitation/pain patients, the clinician or healthcare provider is able to assess which scale scores are elevated above what is normal or expected for the average rehabilitation/pain patient.

Can I administer just one of the BBHI 2 scales?

Yes. In fact, the BBHI 2 instrument is a modular assessment. It consists of four parts that can be administered individually if desired. Thus, if some of the BBHI 2 scales are not of interest to a caregiver, if time constraints prevent the administration of the entire BBHI 2, or if caregivers prefer to rely upon other instruments to assess certain factors, parts of the BBHI 2 assessment can be left blank. Unlike most psychological tests, the BBHI 2 assessment invalidates one scale at a time, rather than the whole test. As a result, even when entire scales are left blank, the BBHI 2 assessment still provides interpretable information.

Part I scores the Pain Complaints scale

Part II scores the Somatic Complaints scale

Part III scores the Defensiveness and Functional Complaints scales

Part IV scores the Depression and Anxiety scales

Scoring

What are the BBHI 2 defaults?

If a Pain Diagnostic Category is not selected, it will default to a pain comparison for community norms. If none of the print option boxes are selected, a Standard Report will print. By default, you will NOT receive Item Responses or the Patient Summary.

If I score a Standard Report, can I print an Extended Report at no extra charge?

Yes. This is also the case if you print an Extended Report and would like to print a Standard Report.

How are the ratings and percentiles of each scale determined on the profile report?

The ratings are based on approximate percentile ranks. An extremely high or extremely low score suggests that the patient is in the highest or lowest 1% of the patient group.

A very high or very low score suggests that the patient is in the highest or lowest 5% of the patient group.

A high or low score suggests that the patient is in the highest or lowest 16% of the patient group, which means that he or she is more than one standard deviation away from the mean of the patient group.

A moderately high or moderately low score suggests that the patient is reporting a level of difficulties that is within normal limits for a patient but is more than one standard deviation away from the mean of "normal" nonpatients in the community.

What is the benefit of using the BBHI 2 Pain Scale?

The BBHI 2 Pain Complaints Scale is a double-normed scale, standardized on two national samples. One was a patient sample, and the other a community sample, and both of these samples were stratified to meet U.S. census data for gender, ethnicity, age, and level of education. The patient data was further subdivided into a chronic pain group, which comprised almost half of the sample, with the remainder being acute pain patients. The patients were also subdivided into diagnostic groups by their treating professionals. The pain diagnostic groups are divided into five groups: head injury/headache patients, neck injury patients, back injury patients, upper extremity injury patients, and lower extremity injury patients. These groups allow clinicians to make specific comparisons of their patients with a reference group of similarly diagnosed patients.