AN INSTRUMENT TO EVALUATE THE PROCESS OF PSYCHIATRIC-CARE IN AMBULATORY SETTINGS

As part of an evaluation of the Utah Prepaid Mental Health Plan, the P rocess 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 r eviews issues in. the measurement of quality of care and describes the development and implementation of the form. The 67-item form was desi gned for use by a trained abstracter to gather data from CMHC medical records in six areas: general management of the patient, medication ma nagement, medical management, social support, psychiatric hospitalizat ion, and psychiatric assessment. A 59-item version of the form that om its the section on psychiatric assessment has been used in three waves of data collection to document data spanning five years (1990-1994) i n the evaluation of the process of psychiatric care in the Utah plan. It is currently being used longitudinally to examine differences betwe en Utah CMHCs receiving capitated payments and those paid on a fee-for -service basis by Medicaid.