Health Topics

• Data Development
• Health Care Reform
• Health Information Technology
• Medicaid and CHIP
• Medicare
• Mental Health and Substance Abuse
• Payment Policies and Costs
• Public and Population Health
• Quality and Health System Functioning
• State Health Policy

Improving the Delivery of Mental Health Services for Veterans

Meeting the needs of veterans who are homeless, have serious mental illness, and suffer co-morbidities such as substance abuse and posttraumatic stress disorder is a national policy concern. The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) recently completed a strategic transformation plan for improving its mental health services and standardizing the way services are delivered in its mental health residential rehabilitation treatment programs. Since fall 2008, Mathematica has been working with the VA to provide high quality, comprehensive, and timely assessments of how this plan is working to meet the needs of these veterans.

Our expertise in developing assessment instruments, administrative data abstraction procedures, and on-site observation protocols, and in managing large and complex data collection projects, is essential to providing the VA with relevant and useful information on a fast-paced schedule. To determine whether programs are meeting the transformation plan goals, we used the VA’s new Handbook 1162.02 to develop custom assessment protocols that measure implementation progress.

This project includes on-site reviews of 187 programs at 101 facilities nationwide and interviews with up to 1,600 veterans and a similar number of staff. Each review includes analyses of veterans' medical records, program policies, and documents; program observations; interviews with program leaders; and surveys of staff and veterans.

Because of variation in information sources, we are developing a unique data collection system using both web-based and nonelectronic instruments to build an integrated database. This database is key to meeting the VA’s need for timely, comprehensive reporting on each program's implementation progress. In meeting the goals for this project, Mathematica has drawn on a network of resources and collaborated with nationally recognized experts at the Ascellon Corporation and Diogenec Group to conduct on-site quality reviews.