Overview: Ohio Consumer Outcomes Initiative

"The Ohio Mental Health Consumer Outcomes System is an ongoing endeavor to obtain outcome measures for consumers served by Ohio’s public mental health system."

Recognizing the lack of a statewide system of data for consumer outcomes as an indicator of quality, Michael F. Hogan, Ph.D., then Director of the Ohio Department of Mental Health convened the Ohio Mental Health Outcomes Task Force (OTF) on September 12, 1996.

The OTF, consisting of consumers, family members, providers, boards, researchers and evaluators, ODMH staff and ODADAS staff, was asked to recommend to ODMH "a standard, statewide, ongoing approach to measuring outcomes for consumers served by Ohio’s public mental health system (The Ohio Mental Health Consumer Outcomes System Procedure Manual, 1-2).

The OTF submitted its final report, Vital Signs, to Director Hogan on March 31, 1998. These efforts were followed by the development of the Outcomes Implementation Pilot Coordinating Group (OIPCG) which planned and conducted a consumer outcomes implementation pilot. Lake County, Stark County and an adult provider in Columbiana County volunteered to be the sites for the consumer outcomes pilot. The pilot sites collected data from November 1998 through the spring of 1999. Based on the experiences of the pilot sites, the OIPCG made final recommendations to Director Hogan in December 1999.

The three main purposes for using consumer outcomes are (a) to manage consumer care, (b) to improve the service delivery system, and (c) to account for public resources.  As stated in the Ohio Mental Health Consumer Outcomes System Procedure Manual, "consumer outcomes data provide additional information for individual consumers and workers/clinicians to use in assessment and service/treatment planning. Baseline outcomes data help the consumer and clinician to identify a consumer’s strengths, needs, and goals and to show areas in which the worker/clinician needs to advocate on behalf of the consumer. The comparison of a consumer’s baseline outcomes data with his/her outcomes at subsequent intervals indicates where changes have occurred in the consumer’s life and identifies aspects of the service/treatment plan which the consumer and clinician may need to revise (Procedure Manual,1-7)."

For many clinicians and consumers, this requires a shift in the manner in which treatment is provided. In order for the Outcomes System to be used effectively, the consumer must be involved in treatment decisions and treatment planning process. The consumer, to the extent possible, will become more involved in their treatment and take ownership of their progress. The Outcomes System provides consumers and clinicians a tool to enhance the consumer’s recovery.

The OTF defines consumer outcomes as "indicators of health or well-being for an individual or family, as measured by statements or characteristics of the consumer/family, not the service system (procedure manual 1-2)." 

The OTF collapsed indicators that were of special interest to the Ohio Consumer Outcomes Project into the following four domains.  

The OTF then developed specific surveys for different consumer populations and their providers.  The table below provides links to each survey from the Ohio Department of Mental Health's Consumer Outcomes Outcomes Initiative web page.