Conclusions

1. The SPMHS outcomes report is now in the 5th year and the 2016 report builds on the previous reports from 2012 onwards. Service evaluation, outcome measurement, clinical audit and service user experience surveys continue to be used routinely in the context of improving the quality of service delivery.

2. Service user experience survey results indicate the service user experience of SPMHS services continued to be very positive overall.

3. The clinical staff delivering the programmes and services continue to identify the appropriate validated clinical outcome measures and utilise them as a routine part of clinical service delivery. Clinical outcome measurement is now an established practice within SPMHS, with clinical staff driving ways to expand or improve the way we measure outcomes and utilise them to maintain and improve services.

4. Clinical outcomes data was added for the SAGE Programme (Older Adults Psychology Skills Group) in 2016. SAGE is a psychological therapy group for older adults who are experiencing difficulties with anxiety and /or depression and are interested in applying a psychological approach to their difficulties. Work was also commenced in 2016, to establish further additional outcome measures to determine the efficacy of more services in 2017.

5. The scope of audit across the organisation was further strengthened in 2016, consistent with the requirements of the Mental Health Commission’s 2016 revisions to the Judgement Support Framework.

6. Strengths: Few, if any, other services in Ireland has provided the same level of insight into service accessibility, efficacy of clinical programmes/services and service user satisfaction. The report also demonstrates the organisation’s willingness and ability to reflect on results and use results to identify ways to improve practice. For example, this year’s report demonstrates continued improvements from 2015’s results for inpatient service users’ perceptions regarding their involvement in the care planning process support the team based. This supports the on-going organisational wide efforts to increase service user involvement and engagement with their care planning process. The broad range of measures regarding clinical outcomes, service accessibility and service user satisfaction provide valuable information for the organisation regarding the commissioning and improvement of services.

7. Challenges: Not all services within the organisation are reporting clinical outcomes in this report yet, however SPMHS have continued the expansion of those services reporting again in 2016. It is difficult to benchmark the results of this report as no other organisation similar to SPMHS produces a comparable report. In order to best capture the efficacy of clinical programmes and services, there have been changes in the outcome measures used, which can create difficulties when comparing results to previous reports. The report’s clinical outcome results cannot be solely attributed to the service or intervention being measured and are not developed to the standard of randomised control trials.