About Outcome Measurement

Victorian Collection of OM in PDRSS

Background

OM is routinely required for all clinical mental health services across Australia. The collection of routine OM is targeted for consumers accessing specialist clinical mental health services with a combination of clinician and consumer rated measures.

The PDRSS sector is diverse and services have a choice between three self-assessment measures but there are no universal complementary clinician measures. This means that there is limited capacity for benchmarking of OM in the PDRSS sector in Victoria. Althought the national OM initiative only covers the clinical sector, in Victoria measurement of consumer outcomes is part of an overall quality improvement strategy for the Psychiatric Disability Rehabilitation and Support Service (PDRSS) sector. The Mental Health Branch recognises the value of offering service users an opportunity to rate their own mental health and encourages PDRS services to collect consumer ratings and to analyse them locally.

Monitoring consumer outcomes is an important aspect of PDRSS work as it highlights changes that occur in the lives of individual consumers during the period they have been supported by a PDRSS. Providing consumers with the opportunity to rate their own mental health and quality of life enhances the ongoing relationship and discussion between staff and consumers.

There are three separate outcome measures in use in PDRS services in Victoria: the WHOQoL, the CANSAS and the BASIS-32.

As outcome measurement implies measuring change over time, it is expected that outcome measures will only be offered to PDRSS consumers who have an Individual Program Plan. This means that Mutual Support and Self Help services will not be involved in outcome measurement. Also, people who attend Day Program drop-in only, or who may only attend a Planned Respite service once, would typically not be involved in outcome measurement.

Look up other quality initiatives for PDRSS.

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Measures

BASIS-32^®
The 32-item Behaviour and Symptom Identification Scale, or BASIS-32^®, is a brief self-reporting measure for use by consumers of mental health services. The 32 items are grouped into five domains, (relation to self and others, daily living and role functioning, depression and anxiety, impulsive and addictive behaviour and psychosis).

The BASIS-32^® was developed by McLean Hospital in Massachusetts, USA. The measure is not in the public domain. Copyright rests with McLean Hospital. DHS has an arrangement in place with McLean Hospital governing the use of the BASIS-32^® in Victoria and PDRS services using the BASIS-32^® need to sign an end-user 'deed of licence' in order to be covered by this agreement.

CANSAS
The Camberwell Assessment of Need - Short Appraisal Schedule or CANSAS is a one-page instrument for the comprehensive assessment of the needs of people with severe mental health problems. It covers possible difficulties in 22 domains over the last month. The measure can be completed from a user, carer or staff perspective. No formal training is required to complete the measure.

WHOQoL
The World Health Organisation Quality of Life (WHOQoL BREF) is the short version of the 100-item Quality of Life scale developed by the World Health Organisation. The scale's 26 items cover four domains: physical health, psychological health, social relationships and environment. There are also two global questions about the respondent's overall satisfaction with their health and quality of life. The responses relate to the previous two weeks.

Resources

Guidelines

The guidelines for outcome measurement in PDRSS are posted below:

Measuring Consumer Outcomes: Guidelines for PDRSS 2004 (PDF File 98KB)

Please note that the guidelines for OM raters posted elsewhere on this website relate only to clinical mental health services, not PDRSS.

Data Entry

The data entry program posted below is a small executable file that can be downloaded and installed on your PC to facilitate data entry for the outcome measure used in your PDRS service.

Please note that this program is provided to you on an 'as is' basis; while we have tested the application in our environment, you download it at your own risk and DHS is not able to provide you with any technical support about how the program should be installed or used. DHS will not be responsible for any damage or loss of service resulting from installation or use of the program. Please see the 'Readme' document posted below before installing and using the PDRSS Outcome Measurement Tool:

Readme : PDRSS Outcome Measurement Tool (PDF File 34KB)

PDRSS Executable (ZIP File 463KB)

Publications

Improving Services through Consumer Population Outcome Measurement in PDRSS 2003 (PDF File 212KB)

This paper written by the Australian Institute for Primary Care, explores outcome measurement in PDRSS and includes a more detailed description of the self-rating instruments now in use in Victoria. It suggests a process that PDRSS can use to select the most appropriate measure for their service.

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