ABSTRACT
Health care providers and managers are familiar with the limitations of current quality assurance (QA) practices, which do little to indicate the overall effectiveness of health care programs. This article discusses a comprehensive method of evaluating program effectiveness, efficiency, cost, client satisfaction, and adherence to standards. The authors present the Brockville Psychiatric Hospital's experience in evaluating a new program with data collected from a multi-faceted QA perspective, and suggest that combining program evaluation with QA could become the standard for future program assessments.
Subject(s)
Hospitals, Psychiatric/standards , Outcome Assessment, Health Care/standards , Quality Assurance, Health Care/standards , Community Mental Health Services/standards , Humans , Ontario , Program Evaluation/methods , Quality of LifeABSTRACT
The effectiveness of a new approach to providing psychiatric rehabilitation services in community settings will be assessed using a combination of quality assurance principles and program evaluation techniques. A new Assertive Community Rehabilitation Program (ACRP) is evaluated and compared with existing hospital rehabilitation programs. Measures of service efficiency, admission, discharge and readmission rates, and service costs are made for 100 new referrals, 99 inpatients and 117 outpatients. Follow-up interviews use standardized measures of clients' quality of life, clinical status, client and staff satisfaction, and community resource utilization. After 19 weeks of operation, the ACRP has prevented more admissions, and discharged more inpatients than the comparison programs. Readmission rates have not differed. Results at the end of the one-year project using this program-based quality assurance approach will facilitate managerial decisions about the future of rehabilitation services.
