title: An instrument to evaluate the process of psychiatric care in ambulatory settings.
abstract: As part of an evaluation of the Utah Prepaid Mental Health Plan, the Process of Care Review Form was developed to assess the quality of the process of psychiatric care provided by Utah's community mental health centers (CMHCs) to clients with schizophrenia. This article briefly reviews issues in the measurement of quality of care and describes the development and implementation of the form. The 67-item form was designed for use by a trained abstracter to gather data from CMHC medical records in six areas: general management of the patient, medication management, medical management, social support, psychiatric hospitalization, and psychiatric assessment. A 59-item version of the form that omits the section on psychiatric assessment has been used in three waves of data collection to document data spanning five years (1990-1994) in the evaluation of the process of psychiatric care in the Utah plan. It is currently being used longitudinally to examine differences between Utah CMHCs receiving capitated payments and those paid on a fee-for-service basis by Medicaid.
authors.affiliation: Hennepin County Medical Center, Minneapolis, MN 55415, USA.
authors.forename: M K
authors.initials: MK
authors.lastname: Popkin
authors.forename: A L
authors.initials: AL
authors.lastname: Callies
authors.forename: N
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Lurie
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Harman
authors.forename: T
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Stoner
authors.forename: W G
authors.initials: WG
authors.lastname: Manning
mesh_terms: D000553:Ambulatory Care / Q000592:standards*; D003131:Combined Modality Therapy; D003155:Community Mental Health Centers / Q000592:standards*; D003482:Custodial Care; D006801:Humans; D008137:Longitudinal Studies; D001523:Mental Disorders / Q000534:rehabilitation*; D010348:Patient Care Team; D011787:Quality of Health Care / Q000145:classification*; D014589:Utah