Introduction

This report presents outcomes relating to clinical care, clinical governance processes, clinical programmes and service user satisfaction rates, within St Patrick’s Mental Health Services (SPMHS). It is the sixth year that an outcomes report has been produced by SPMHS and is central to the organisation’s promotion of excellence in mental health care. By measuring and publishing outcomes of the services we provide, we strive to understand what we do well and what we need to continue to improve. Wherever possible validated tools are utilised throughout this report and the choice of clinical outcome measures used is constantly under review, to ensure we are attaining the best possible standards of service delivery.

Leading healthcare providers around the world capture outcome measures related to care and treatment and make the results publicly available in order to enable service users, referrers and commissioners to make informed choices about what services they choose. This transparency informs staff of the outcomes of services they provide and advances a culture of accountability for the services being delivered. It provokes debate about what care and treatment should be provided and crucially how best to measure their efficacy. The approach of sharing treatment outcome results has also been used by the Mental Health Commission in Ireland (Mental Health Commission, 2012).

The 2016 Report is divided into 6 Sections.

Section 2:

Outlines information regarding how SPMHS services are structured and how community, day-patient and inpatient services were accessed in 2016. SPMHS provides community and outpatient care through its Dean Clinic Community Mental Health Clinics and day-patient services through its Wellness & Recovery Centre. It provides inpatient care through its three approved centres, St Patrick’s University Hospital (SPUH), St Edmundsbury Hospital (SEH) and Willow Grove Adolescent Unit (WGAU).

Section 3:

Summarises the measures and outcomes of the organisation’s Clinical Governance processes.

Section 4:

Provides an analysis of clinical outcomes for a range of clinical programmes and services. This information provides practice-based evidence of the efficacy of interventions and programmes delivered to service users during 2016, reflecting the use and measurement of evidence-based mental health practice across SPMHS. SPMHS considers service user participation and consultation to be essential and integral aspect of clinical service development

Section 5:

Summarises the outcomes from a number of service user satisfaction surveys which assist the organisation in continually improving its services so that more people have a positive experience of care, treatment and support at SPMHS. In addition, these service user evaluations provide a method of involving and empowering service users to improve mental health service standards.

Section 6:

Summarises the Report’s conclusions regarding the process and findings of outcome measurement within the organisation.