Mental
Health: Systems Transformation
MINNESOTA
Grant
Information
Name of Grantee
Minnesota
Department of Human Services
Title of Grant
Using
Evidence to Transform Systems: Science in Service of Children's Mental Health
Type of Grant
Mental
Health: Systems Transformation
Amount of Grant
$300,000
Year Original Funding
Received
2004
Contact
Information
Dr. Patricia Nygaard, Project
Lead
Children's Mental Health Division
Minnesota Department of Human Services
PO Box 64985
St. Paul, MN 55164-0985
651-431-2332
pat.nygaard@state.mn.us
Subcontractor(s)
Dr. Eric Daleiden, Consultant
Hawaii Department of Health
808-733-8354
eldaleid@camhmis.health.state.hi.us
Dr. Bruce Chorpita, Consultant
University of Hawaii
808-956-3607
chorpita@hawaii.edu
Sue Abderholden, Supervisor
National Alliance for the Mentally Ill, Minnesota
(NAMI-MN)
651-645-2948
sabderholden@nami.org
Target
Population(s)
Medicaid-eligible children with serious
emotional disturbance (SED).
Goals
- Expand and update
scientific information available to providers and families for guiding
decisions about children's mental health care.
- Improve the service
quality of children's mental health systems of care through the
development of an evidence-based practices (EBP) database.
- Establish a fully
operational system that improves outcomes for children and families.
Activities
- Produce a document that
defines high level concepts to guide priorities and policies for systems
development.
- Produce guidelines for
diagnostic assessments and identified outcomes measures for children's
mental health.
- Produce a document that
details the specifications for the EBP database.
- Develop training
manuals, Web site supports, and ITV and site trainings for families, parent
advocates, providers, and county case managers.
- Import the modified
Hawaii EBP database to an appropriate site and establish maintenance
agreements/contracts.
- Develop software or
other technology to support pilot projects to design and test the prototype
system.
- Develop and test a
provider performance system and produce service authorization guidelines.
- Produce an interim
evaluation report on the pilot projects, and conduct beta testing of the
claims and authorization systems.
- Develop a Continuous Quality
Monitoring process that will start producing reports.
- Implement a fully
operational EBP database system, continue to provide training on the
system, and produce a final evaluation report.
Abstract
The Minnesota Department of Human Services will develop and
implement an evidence-based practices database to function as a clinical
decision-making tool for parents and providers. The project is designed to make
the best possible use of structures and processes used by Hawaii to implement
evidence-based interventions throughout its system of care, to determine
modifications in those structures and processes needed to match Minnesota's
unique assets and constraints, and to evaluate the effectiveness and
cost-efficiency of these changes to Minnesota's children's mental health
service system.
Based on Hawaii's
approach, the project will join families and providers in a
learning collaborative to build and implement a systematic approach to
evidence-based services from published research and evaluation data. By the end
of the project's first year, there will be a plan in place for technical
systems changes that need to be made; evidence-based concepts will be familiar
to a wide range of families, providers, and administrators; and Minnesota will
be prepared to acquire and install the Hawaii-developed core practice elements
database. In the second phase of the project, spanning most of Year 2, pilot
projects will be developed, implemented, and evaluated. Pilot sites will be
chosen regionally in order to ensure the applicability of the project to urban,
rural, and frontier areas. At the end of Year 3, the State will have a fully
operational EBP database accompanied by strengthened collaborative
consumer/provider relationships, customized training materials, enhanced claims
and authorization systems, a continuous quality monitoring system, and
evaluation reports.
Ultimately, the outcome will be a statewide system that
improves clinical and functional outcomes for children, and parents and
providers will have more choices in treating children. These system changes
will also result in less institutional treatment of children and greater
efficiencies in the State's Medicaid system.