National Envelope- National Initiatives

Continuous Enhancement of Quality Measurement in Primary Mental Health Care

$2,000,000

This initiative is led by the Mental Health Evaluation and Community Consultation Unit (Mheccu), Department of Psychiatry, University of British Columbia.

Partners:

St. Paul's Hospital, British Columbia Ministry of Health Services, Canadian Mental Health Association, McMaster University, University of Western Ontario, University of Toronto, National Public Institute of Quebec, University of Calgary, Saskatchewan Health Quality Council, University of Saskatchewan, and Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI).

Objectives:

• Establish a national consensus regarding primary care mental health quality indicators;
• Enhance the uptake and promote implementation of these indicators;
• Promote coherence between this indicator project and other related indicator initiatives (e.g. CIHI Roadmap); and
• Promote inter-provincial coherence of health indicators.

Activities:

• Review best practices for primary care mental health for selected domains of primary care mental health services;
• Produce a set of consensus indicators for primary care mental health services;
• Establish a provincial and territorial knowledge transfer network amongst clinicians and decision-makers related to primary care mental health indicators;
• Create a project website that includes relevant quality indicator resources;
• Evaluate the immediate and intermediate steps required to operationalize indicators into existing data systems; and
• Evaluate the impact of the overall initiative using qualitative and/or quantitative methods to examine project barriers and facilitators.

Expected Results:

• Improved collaborative relationships amongst stakeholder groups (e.g., clinicians, decision-makers, consumers) and regions with respect to primary care indicators;
• Increased awareness of quality issues in primary care mental health services;
• Improved methods for implementation of quality indicator projects;
• Focussed proposals to operationalize selected indicators into data systems; and
• Improved coordination of indicator activity and quality improvement activity in the provinces and regions with respect to primary mental health care.

Contact:

Radha Puri
Program Manager - Mheccu
University of British Columbia
2250 Westbrook Mall
Vancouver, BC V6T 1W6
Tel: (604) 682-2344 ext. 63552
Fax: (604) 806-8854
Email: rmpuri@interchange.ubc.ca
http://www.mheccu.ubc.ca