Measuring mental health performance

Associate Health Minister Jonathan Coleman today welcomed the roll out of an initiative to improve the quality of mental health and addiction services.

The Key Performance Indicator Framework for Mental Health and Addiction Services initiative focuses on sharing good practices between District Health Boards and promoting improvements in service delivery.

Nine DHBs and some non-government organisation partners took part in an 18-month live test of the programme. This measured and compared key performance data through a benchmarking process. Following a successful test phase, the project is set to roll out to include all 20 DHBs.

''This initiative has been driven by DHBs and clinicians, and each of the DHBs had areas of good performance and areas where they wanted to see improvement,'' Dr Coleman says.

''The benchmarking process gave them the opportunity to share best practices. One of the key aims is to ensure clients are getting the services and support they need.''

Dr Coleman says the Ministry of Health will be monitoring the project to ensure that the quality improvement is achieving the best results.

Dr Margaret Aimer, Clinical Director, Mental Health Services, Counties Manukau DHB says that 10 indicators reflecting important issues for the sector were investigated during the test.

The indicators look at a range of areas including the average length of acute in-patient stay and the number of community treatment days for clients.

 
'This gave us a picture of the performance of the mental health system and let participants investigate variations in performance and learn about good practice,'' Dr Aimer says.

‘'Where a system of care works well for one DHB we can replicate it elsewhere to get improved outcomes for our clients. The implementation phase will provide a wealth of data that best supports quality and performance improvement efforts at the local level.''

This phase should be completed by mid-2012.

The project builds on similar work conducted in Australia. The New Zealand programme however, has been designed specifically for New Zealand mental health and addiction services and addresses current important issues in the sector.