Background: Monitoring quality of care in the context of psychiatric hospitalization is crucial. The Israeli National quality, Service and Safety Administration project has signified a major step in this direction enhancing the measuring and monitoring the quality of care.
Purpose: The objective of the proposed study is to take a further step in this direction by developing, implementing and monitoring a routine systematic evaluation of clinical process and outcome indicators, patient reported experience (PREMs) and patient reported outcomes (PROMs) to study the quality and continuity of care over time.
Hypotheses: We hypothesize that 1) adherence to indicators will be associated with better PREMs, PROMs and clinician ratings 2) PROMs and clinician ratings will be positively related and 3) PREMs and PROMs will be positively related.
Method: 125 patients (ages 18-55) admitted to SHALVATA mental health center and their clinicians will be recruited to participate in a prospective longitudinal assessment. Each will include PREMs, PROMs clinician rated outcomes and assessment of the degree to which clinical indicators (reflected processes of clinical guidelines) were carried out. The assessments will take place at admission, discharge and every 3 months for up for 9 months. The design is a repeated measures design with evaluating the interaction effect between assessed levels of indicators ("between subject effect") and level of change in the PREMs, PROMs clinician along the research trajectory ("within subject effect").
Importance of the study: The mental health reform, implemented cross-nationally since 2015 emphasizes client centred and continuity of care and seeks to increase the quality, availability and accessibility of mental health services in Israel. Most of the discussion to date has been on the later issues of access and availability and much less on quality and continuity of care which requires standardized routine longitudinal assessment of process indicators and patients reported experience and outcome. The proposed study represents a pioneer effort to collect systematic data which can help evaluate the quality and impact of services over time. Findings can be useful to guide policy about the feasibility and impact of process indicators and their relation to PROMs and PREMs over time.
