Evaluating a Measure of Social Health Derived from Two Mental Health Recovery Measures: The California Quality of Life (CA-QOL) and Mental Health Statistics Improvement Program Consumer Survey (MHSIP)

Social health is important to measure when assessing outcomes in community mental health. Our objective was to validate social health scales using items from two broader commonly used measures that assess mental health outcomes. Participants were 609 adults receiving psychological treatment services. Items were identified from the California Quality of Life (CA-QOL) and Mental Health Statistics Improvement Program (MHSIP) outcome measures by their conceptual correspondence with social health and compared to the Social Functioning Questionnaire (SFQ) using correlational analyses. Pearson correlations for the identified CA-QOL and MSHIP items with the SFQ ranged from .42 to .62, and the identified scale scores produced Pearson correlation coefficients of .56, .70, and, .70 with the SFQ. Concurrent validity with social health was supported for the identified scales. The current inclusion of these assessment tools allows community mental health programs to include social health in their assessments

Full-service partnerships among adults with serious mental illness in California: impact on utilization and costs.

ObjectiveCalifornia's full-service partnerships (FSPs) provide a combination of subsidized permanent housing and multidisciplinary team-based services with a focus on rehabilitation and recovery. The goal of the study was to examine whether participation in FSPs is associated with changes in health service use and costs compared with usual care.MethodsA quasi-experimental, pre-post, intent-to-treat design with a propensity score-matched contemporaneous control group was used to compare health service use and costs among 10,231 FSP clients and 10,231 matched clients with serious mental illness who were receiving public mental health services in California from January 1, 2004, through June 30, 2010.ResultsAmong FSP participants, the mean annual number of mental health outpatient visits increased by 55.5, and annual mental health costs increased by $11,725 relative to the matched control group. Total service costs increased by$12,056.ConclusionsParticipation in an FSP was associated with increases in outpatient visits and their associated costs. As supportive housing programs are implemented nationally and on a large scale, these programs will likely need to be more effectively designed and targeted in order to achieve reductions in costly inpatient services

Risk Adjustment with Social Determinants of Health and Implications for Federally Qualified Health Centers under the Affordable Care Act

Adjustments for the underlying differences in risks among patients in payment approaches has been widely used and accepted; yet current risk adjustment approaches are limited because they do not account for the various social determinants of health (SDH) that can also influence health outcomes. This can have implications for providers serving disadvantaged populations. This article discusses why the inclusion of SDH in the formulas for risk adjustment is important for federally qualified health centers (FQHCs) under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) and recommends ways in which FQHCs can be leaders in informing payment reform policies