New Projects: Efficiency, cost and quality of mental healthcare provision

ScHARR is working with the Universities of Birmingham and York on a research project that will use a quality of life framework to assess cost-effectiveness of mental health trusts and how they vary on cost and quality. It will assess organisational factors which drive improvements in cost and quality of mental healthcare and analyse how mental health trusts can reallocate resources in order to improve their efficiency and cost- effectiveness. The project is funded by the Health Foundation, an independent health care charity, as part of its £1.5 million Efficiency Research Programme. 

CC BY 2.0 Kevin Simmons http://bit.ly/2rBHr7V

Mental illness has a significant impact on individuals, society and the economy. The mental healthcare sector is under huge financial pressure and providers are undertaking large-scale cost reduction programmes. Service reconfigurations are impacting negatively on quality of care for patients and there is little understanding of how providers can reallocate resources to increase efficiency. This Efficiency Research project led by the University of York will look at the efficiency, cost and quality of current mental healthcare provision, and how changes can be made to drive efficiency improvements. The work package led by ScHARR will assess which quality indicators are valued by service users, clinicians, and the general population, for example improvements in outcomes, better and more equitable access to care, and distance to provider. We will derive QALY (quality-adjusted life year) weightings for these different aspects in order to assess efficiency, using a QALY framework. 

ScHARR will also estimate mapping functions that use HONOS data to predict utility values for Recovering Quality of Life (ReQoL), a Patient Reported Outcome Measure developed to assess the quality of life of people with different mental health conditions. The project team will then be able to produce a cost-effectiveness plane for mental health trusts to identify high-quality, low-cost providers and further examine organisational factors that are associated with cost-effectiveness. The project team hope to then estimate how resources can be reallocated to activities where they are more cost-effective, and what input-mix (e.g. capital, labour) might be associated with improved cost-effectiveness.

Health Foundation press release 

University of York press release


Further information about ReQoL