APPENDIX A
CRITERIA FOR PUBLIC BEHAVIORAL HEALTH BEST PRACTICE DOMAINS

System Best
Practice Domain
Criteria for Measuring the Degree to which
the Best Practice Domain is Met
Customer Orientation
  • Services are welcoming, engaging, accessible, and culturally competent;
  • The service system responds to individual needs in an effective manner;
  • All customers are treated with dignity and respect;
  • Customer satisfaction and dis-satisfaction are routinely and effectively assessed, and the information collected is used for service planning and quality improvement activities;
  • Every staff person in every service location and at every level of service delivery and management knows who the customers are, and feels personally responsible for satisfying each customer.
  • Customers and their families are meaningfully involved in all aspects of service planning, development, delivery, and evaluation;
  • All services and supports are individualized and tailored to individual needs and choices;
  • Customers are perceived and understood to be whole people with ranges of strengths, resources and needs, and not simply as individuals with behavioral health problems; and
  • The system provides public information and advocacy to reduce stigma and to assure understanding, acceptance and support on the part of communities for individuals with disabilities.
System Best
Practice Domain
Criteria for Measuring the Degree to which
the Best Practice Domain is Met
Clinical Excellence
  • Strong clinical leadership is empowered at all levels of service delivery and management throughout the behavioral health system;
  • The system supports all service components through the provision of adequate resources, training, technical assistance, and coordination of quality improvement efforts;
  • The system implements evidence-based best practice for all service modalities;
  • Clinical and program support staff receive regular and timely competency - based on the job training and supervision related to evidence-based best practice, and receive support for implementing best practice approaches throughout the service system;
  • All applicable components of the service system attain the highest level of credentialing and accreditation;
  • All components of the service system employ comprehensive consumer outcome-based quality management and quality improvement practices; and
  • Utilization management criteria and protocols assure appropriate service access and utilization, while protecting against under- or over-utilization of services.
  • The services and supports provided by the system foster and enhance independence, self- sufficiency, recovery, and integration in normal community activities;
System Best
Practice Domain
Criteria for Measuring the Degree to which
the Best Practice Domain is Met
Integration
  • The system takes responsibility for assuring integration and coordination with the primary health care system
  • Each service component within the behavioral health system is effectively linked and integrated with all other components;
  • Clinicians and service providers at all levels are co- and cross trained and have sufficient skill and understanding to provide integrated treatment and/or responses to consumers presenting with multiple needs and/or disabilities;
  • The service system assures effective communication, coordination, integration, and facilitated access for consumers to housing, employment, recreation, education, and other necessary community resources and services; and
  • The service system fosters and supports integration of all consumers into normal community living.
System Best
Practice Domain
Criteria for Measuring the Degree to which
the Best Practice Domain is Met
Continuity
  • The behavioral health system provides a person or team to function as the single point of responsibility, accountability, communication, and continuity for each consumer of long-term services;
  • Clinicians and service providers understand, respect, and respond to the need of most long term consumers to have a trusting and continuous relationship with individuals and program components;
  • Teams rather than individuals provide most community services and supports. This assures continuity of service for consumers, and reduces the discontinuity resulting from staff turnover.
  • Policy, program guidance, and performance measurement approaches must constantly change and improve. At the same time, continuity is maintained between old and new approaches to build on past strengths and successes, to facilitate the transition process, and to support longitudinal outcome, cost and performance analyses.
System Best
Practice Domain
Criteria for Measuring the Degree to which
the Best Practice Domain is Met
Stewardship of public funds
  • There are identified single points of combined clinical and financial accountability, responsibility, and authority at appropriate locations throughout the behavioral health system;
  • All elements of the behavioral health system are routinely evaluated to assure their cost-effective contribution to consumer outcomes and satisfaction and to system-wide performance improvement;
  • At all levels of the system there is a strong commitment to learning and to change;
  • The results of these evaluations of cost-effectiveness and performance are routinely published and interpreted to consumers, family members, and other stakeholders;
  • Financial incentives that foster high performance and efficiency are implemented;
  • Data on individual consumer and program characteristics, utilization, cost, outcome, satisfaction, and performance is regularly available in a timely, consistent, and accurate manner;
  • The system is an effective advocate for its constituents, and effectively communicates to key policy- makers, funders, and the general public about its ability to serve people with serious mental illness or emotional disability, the costs of providing high quality and effective services to these individuals, and the public imperative to provide adequate care;
  • The system is as productive and efficient as possible, and minimizes the use of public resources for administration, indirect costs, and non-performing service components;
  • There is minimal duplication of regulatory and related licensure requirements, and deemed status is granted to program components accredited or credentialed by accepted nation accrediting/credentialing bodies; and
  • Financial systems and controls at all levels of the system assure fiduciary responsibility for public resources.

Top of Page

Table of Contents