title: The development and administration of the Consumer Assessments of Care by New York State Office of Mental Health downstate facilities.
abstract: This article reports on the work of the New York State Office of Mental Health Downstate Alliance, which is comprised of eight psychiatric centers that have formed a consortium to create new initiatives and solve common problems. The first of these initiatives are the inpatient and outpatient versions of the Consumer Assessments of Care, which assess satisfaction with care and quality of life (QOL). Consumers from peer run organizations who administered the survey used a mixed-mode administration method, which leveraged the strengths of the personal interview and anonymous self-report methods. Inpatients reported realistic levels of satisfaction and showed areas for improvement for inpatient units across facilities. Outpatients were considerably more satisfied with care, but ratings were lower on the work and community involvement dimensions of QOL. Factor analyses indicated that a one-factor model, satisfaction with care, fit the data well for the inpatient survey. A two-factor solution, satisfaction with care and QOL, was successfully fit to the outpatient data. Internal consistency reliability levels were excellent for both assessments.
authors.affiliation: Downstate Technical Committee(1), New York State Office of Mental Health, New York, NY, USA.
authors.forename: Thomas
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Uttaro