Benchmarking child and adolescent mental health organizations.

Publisher: Sage Country of Publication: England NLM ID: 9613603 Publication Model: Print-Electronic Cited Medium: Internet ISSN: 1440-1665 (Electronic) Linking ISSN: 10398562 NLM ISO Abbreviation: Australas Psychiatry Subsets: MEDLINE

Publication: 2012- : London : Sage
Original Publication: Carlton, VIC : Blackwell Science

Adolescent Health Services/*standards ; Benchmarking/*methods ; Child Health Services/*standards ; Mental Health Services/*standards; Adolescent ; Adolescent Health Services/economics ; Ambulatory Care ; Australia ; Child ; Child Health Services/economics ; Community Mental Health Services/standards ; Cost-Benefit Analysis ; Data Collection ; Health Services Needs and Demand/statistics & numerical data ; Humans ; Inpatients ; Length of Stay ; Mental Disorders/economics ; Mental Disorders/therapy ; Mental Health Services/economics ; Patient Discharge ; Patient Readmission/statistics & numerical data ; Quality Indicators, Health Care ; Quality of Health Care/standards ; Treatment Outcome

Objective: This paper describes aspects of the child and adolescent benchmarking forums that were part of the National Mental Health Benchmarking Project (NMHBP). These forums enabled participating child and adolescent mental health organizations to benchmark themselves against each other, with a view to understanding variability in performance against a range of key performance indicators (KPIs).
Method: Six child and adolescent mental health organizations took part in the NMHBP. Representatives from these organizations attended eight benchmarking forums at which they documented their performance against relevant KPIs. They also undertook two special projects designed to help them understand the variation in performance on given KPIs.
Results: There was considerable inter-organization variability on many of the KPIs. Even within organizations, there was often substantial variability over time. The variability in indicator data raised many questions for participants. This challenged participants to better understand and describe their local processes, prompted them to collect additional data, and stimulated them to make organizational comparisons. These activities fed into a process of reflection about their performance.
Conclusions: Benchmarking has the potential to illuminate intra- and inter-organizational performance in the child and adolescent context.

Date Created: 20110226 Date Completed: 20110715 Latest Revision: 20220309

20221213

10.3109/10398562.2010.540248

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