Introduction
The objective of the Mental Health Benchmarking Project is to support the improvement of mental health services to promote best practice by using benchmarking to understand, evaluate and compare services and their outcomes.
The function of this Technical Appendix is to act as a supplement to accompany the main report by providing further detail on the project work carried out and to present the project findings.
Summary of Supporting Information
The Mental Health Benchmarking and Measurement Group in conjunction with partners involved in mental health services, agreed and undertook the following activities:
- assessment of the availability and use of mental health information
- developing a common set of mental health service definitions
- developing a balanced scorecard approach to performance
- evaluation of current mental health information system implementations
- evaluation of the role of information in joint mental health planning.
Glossary and Definitions
A draft glossary of definitions has been produced in conjunction with the Service and has undergone wide consultation with Boards and local authorities via national events and Board visits. There was broad agreement with the mental health definitions consulted on and these definitions were incorporated. Where no such agreement existed, the disagreements were categorised into minor and diverse changes for investigation by the Mental Health Benchmarking and Measurement Group (core group) and were amended if necessary and/or appropriate.
Future work will involve the development of full joint definitions with the local authorities and other partners.
The mental health glossary and definitions are contained within Appendix A with the mental health definitions analysis appearing in Appendix B.
Performance Measures
Stakeholder days were held to ascertain the performance measures necessary to manage mental health services effectively via the balanced scorecard approach. A mental health services balanced scorecard, covering both strategic and operational indicators was produced, covering key aspects of performance such as Quality, Efficiency, Cost and Future. This scorecard has been subsequently refined and further developed in collaboration with the Boards, local authorities and other partners within the service.
The latest draft balanced scorecard can be found in Appendix C. A subset of these indicators have been proposed as mandatory national indicators to be adopted and developed by Boards from 2008/09 onwards. These are shown in Appendix D, whilst Appendix E provides detailed definitions of the measures to be calculated.
Appendix F displays the tables utilised for the AVON mental health measure. Appendix G shows an outline reporting framework and the different users and uses of indicators.
Existing Data
Data is available at national level but this data is insufficient to demonstrate the shift from acute and other hospital-based services to community-based services within mental health services.
Appendix H illustrates the high level metrics which can be derived from this data; however they do not capture the whole story of a comprehensive mental health service due to information gaps.
Capability Scoping
During April to July 2007, capability scoping visits were made to all mainland Health Boards and related local authorities, with video conferencing held with one Island Board. The purpose of these visits was to:
- communicate the purpose and objectives of the Mental Health Benchmarking and Measurement Project
- seek Board input to current activities
e.g. scorecard and definitions development - assess locally available mental health information
- evaluate mental health system implementations
- evaluate the role of information in joint mental health planning.
The detailed findings from the capability scoping are contained within Appendices Ito M.