The Children’s Mental Health Benchmarking Project was developed by Dougherty Management Associates with funding from the Annie E. Casey Foundation and the Center for Health Care Strategies. The project has begun to review and compare data on public mental health systems for children in several states and counties. The project’s goal is to offer policy makers the ability to benchmark their performance. We selected indicators from previously published performance indicator initiatives that appeared to be most relevant to children, most useful and most likely to be available. This selection process resulted in a set of indicators related to access, utilization, financial performance, and intersystem involvement including, for example, penetration rate, inpatient utilization, expenditures per capita, and out of home placement rate. We approached 38 state and county mental health agencies and received responses expressing interest in the project from 21 of those. We ultimately received data from thirteen sites; on average, five sites reported data on each variable. By the fall of 2001 this project will have gathered a second round of data from the original sites and, we expect, additional ones. The proposed presentation will include a description of the project and its two years worth of findings. We will examine the indicators selected, the experiences of our respondents in providing data, revisions to the original indicators and the value of the project to participants and others in the field. Ultimately, the ability to share data and learn from one another is what will stimulate systems to improve care. See www.doughertymanagement.com
Learning Objectives: At the conclusion of this session, participants will know: 1) The importance of benchmarking public mental health indicators; 2) How indicators were selected for this project; 3) The range of responses from states and counties on indicators such as penetration rate, expenditures per capita, readmission rate and others; and 4) The obstacles states and counties confronted as they attempted to gather and submit data.
Keywords: Child/Adolescent Mental Health, Public Mental Health
Presenting author's disclosure statement:
Organization/institution whose products or services will be discussed: none
I do not have any significant financial interest/arrangement or affiliation with any organization/institution whose products or services are being discussed in this session.