Improving Mental Health Care

Divided into three parts, these chapters describe the challenges today's practitioners face in providing optimal mental health care, review proven techniques for quality measurement, and provide 14 detailed case reports of quality improvement projects whose principles and techniques can be replicated or tailored for a variety of clinical settings.

How can professionals maintain or improve the quality of care they provide when pressured by payers to reduce the cost of care?

Clinicians today face the challenge of providing optimal care in an environment where costs drive clinical practice. But high quality, not cost, remains the goal of professionals. By arming themselves with measurable results, clinicians can improve the processes of delivering mental health care and translate those improvements into better outcomes for patients and their families. In this timely guide, the editors have gathered the work of 49 distinguished contributors and crafted a valuable resource for overcoming the extraordinary challenge of delivering high quality mental health care. This groundbreaking book is divided into three sections: • The challenges today's clinicians face in providing optimal mental health care -- Beginning with a review of the report to then-President Clinton from the Advisory Commission on Consumer Protection and Quality in the Health Care Industry, subsequent chapters discuss professional ethics and managed care, how Wall Street investors are changing the practice of medicine, problems faced by managed care, and changes needed in medical education to ensure that physicians are well prepared to practice medicine in the 21st century. • Proven techniques for quality measurement -- Measuring quality of care presents significant conceptual and methodological problems. These chapters review quality measurement methods and describe support by the federal government to improve these methods. Also addressed are how consumers are joining the quality of care measurement movement and how one large urban county mental health program is advancing quality measurement.• Fourteen case reports of quality improvement projects -- These chapters detail principles and techniques that can be replicated or tailored to fulfill the requirements of a variety of clinical settings, ranging from the national health service in Great Britain to a small geriatric unit in a large hospital. The work showcased here was done by clinicians or administrators who, concerned about the quality of care in their own settings, used data to test for themselves whether their interventions resulted in improved care.

Even if managed care disappeared, we would still need to question, examine, and improve the quality of patient care -- with clinicians taking the lead, because only they can appreciate the subtle nuances that maintain or improve quality standards, and only they can make substantive changes in their clinical settings.

As both a broad conceptual framework for considering the quality of mental health care and as a practical field guide to real-life techniques for measuring the quality of care, this volume will prove exceptionally valuable for mental health care professionals, administrators, and policymakers as well as for consumers and consumer advocates, researchers, students, and public health professionals.

About the EditorsContributorsForewordAcknowledgmentsIntroductionPart I: ChallengesIntroductionChapter 1. The President's Advisory Commission on Consumer Protection and Quality in the Health Care IndustryChapter 2. Maintaining professional ethics in a changing health care systemChapter 3. Quality of care in an era of Wall Street medicineChapter 4. Can managed care deliver quality?Chapter 5. Role of academic medical centers in achieving qualityPart II: Quality MeasurementIntroductionChapter 6. Measuring quality: An overviewChapter 7. Risk adjustment of clinical outcome dataChapter 8. Building partnerships in accountability: Consumer satisfactionChapter 9. Toward a national report card: Measuring consumer experiencesChapter 10. Practical steps toward quality improvement: A public sector exampleChapter 11. The American Psychiatric Association's agenda for evidence-based qualityChapter 12. Status of national efforts to improve accountability for qualityPart III: Case ReportsIntroductionChapter 13. Intensive psychiatric community care in the Department of Veteran's AffairsChapter 14. A national strategy to reduce depression and suicide in EnglandChapter 15. The Texas Medication Algorithm ProjectChapter 16. Improving the quality of community-based services for childrenChapter 17. Improved emergency access for Medicaid clients: A Colorado case studyChapter 18. Improving employment outcomes for people with severe psychiatric disabilitiesChapter 19. Matching substance abuse patients to servicesChapter 20. Adverse drug reactions: An interdisciplinary team approachChapter 21. High-risk Medicaid enrollees and a community-based support programChapter 22. Increasing consumer involvement in treatmentChapter 23. Improving the detection of mental disorders by primary care cliniciansChapter 24. Reducing the incidence of restraint and seclusionChapter 25. Using dialectical behavior therapy in the treatment of borderline personality disorderChapter 26. Reducing the risk of falls for elderly patientsAfterwordIndex