Outcomes measures
Excellent mental health services support recovery, and monitor and measure changes in people’s health, wellbeing and circumstances over time. Measuring outcomes for people using mental health and addiction services supports the best possible service delivery and understanding of how well services are doing. Te Pou helps the workforce focus on recovery by providing tools for, and training on, outcomes measurement and mental health information.
Sharing outcomes information is also a therapeutic activity that is highly valued by people receiving services. People want to know how they’re doing.
Using outcomes information well improves services and ensures they are recovery driven, people focused and culturally responsive. Outcomes information also supports continuous quality improvement and innovation.
Outcomes information can assist:
- service users to use their own outcomes data to reflect on their wellbeing and circumstances, talk to clinicians about their support needs and inform their recovery plans
- clinicians to use outcomes information to support their decision-making in day-to-day practice, monitoring change, better understanding the needs of the service user, and also to begin evaluating the effectiveness of different interventions
- planners and funders to assess population needs for mental health services and assist with allocation of resources
- policy and mental health strategy developments through nationally aggregated data.
The Ministry of Health’s national dataset, PRIMHD (Programme for the Integration of Mental Health Data) collects information from DHBs. This single rich source of information informs positive changes in services. Presently the HoNOS family of measures are collected in PRIMHD and it is expected that ADOM will eventually become part of the PRIMHD national collection.
The outcome measures
The Health of the Nations Outcomes Scale (HoNOS) family of measures are the first standard measures of assessment and recovery mandated by the Ministry of Health for collecting mental health outcome information in New Zealand. A number of countries including the United Kingdom, Norway and Australia also use these tools.
The Alcohol and Drug Outcome Measure (ADOM) is a brief outcome measure which consists of 18 questions relevant to New Zealand alcohol and other drug (AOD) services. The tool focuses on a range of substances and can be used in a range of services.
Taku Reo, Taku Mauri Ora - My Voice, My Life is a tangata whaiora/service user self-assessed outcomes measure. While not a validated measure for aggregated use it can be used at an individual level.
You can also read about additional outcomes measures which may have some relevance to the mental health community.
International outcome links
- Australian Mental Health Outcomes and Classification Network
- NSW Mental Health Outcome and Assessment Portal
- Ohio Mental Health Consumer Outcome Initiative
- Victoria (Australia) Mental Health Outcomes
- Scott D Miller’s website for clinical excellence and outcome measurement
