Integrating Behavioral Healthcare Performance Measures Throughout Healthcare

Background

Mental illness and substance use disorders afflict patients in all clinical care settings. Patients with illnesses such as heart disease and diabetes frequently have co-morbid behavioral health problems such as depression or alcohol dependence. Patients with bipolar illness are frequently treated by primary care practitioners. Alcohol-related health problems and severe mental illness are common reasons for admission to acute care hospitals. To date, efforts to develop and implement performance measures for behavioral healthcare have been separate from performance measurement efforts in general healthcare. Patients, however, cannot be neatly divided into separate healthcare worlds; good care for behavioral healthcare problems must involve both general and specialty behavioral healthcare providers.

Scope

This project will convene an expert workgroup to:

• Assess the state of healthcare performance measurement for patients with mental illness and substance use disorders.
• Examine completed and ongoing NQF initiatives, assess the relevance of behavioral healthcare measures to those initiatives (particularly regarding primary and acute care), and recommend promising measurement areas for consideration in current projects and future updates.
• Recommend other areas in which NQF-endorsement of healthcare performance measures for mental illness and substance use disorders would be likely to stimulate significant improvements in the quality of care for these conditions across the healthcare spectrum.
• Recommend research needs for furthering the development and implementation of appropriate behavioral healthcare performance measures that are applicable throughout the healthcare system.

The workshop will be a 1-day invitational event in June 2004 in Washington, DC. It will include approximately 20 invited participants. Expected outcomes of the workshop are:

• An inventory of candidate behavioral healthcare measures for consideration in measure sets endorsed by or under consideration by NQF.
• An action plan enumerating next steps for NQF and others in promoting and standardizing behavioral healthcare quality measurement and reporting.
• Workshop proceedings.

Funding

Funding for the workshop has been provided, in part, by Potomac Ridge Behavioral Health System and the Department of Veterans Affairs, with additional support from the George Washington University.

For more information, contact Elaine J. Power at 202.783.1300 or info@qualityforum.org.