Effective Quality Improvement and Evaluation in Mental Health-Primary Care Integration

The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) has awarded Westat a contract to investigate and identify existing measures of mental health primary care integration (Objective 1) and present information about them in a format accessible to interested parties in the broader field (Objective 2). Key activities in support of Objective 1 include (1) assembling a panel with the requisite expertise; (2) working with that panel to develop and refine a conceptual model for integration and evaluation; (3) conducting an environmental scan and review of the relevant literature regarding measures; (4) developing an indexing system to meaningfully categorized identified measures; and (5) developing and refining an atlas of the measures to be available at the AHRQ website. 

The second objective in the task order calls for the identification of effective means to disseminate the information garnered from the tasks to relevant audiences. In support of this objective the project team is tasked with identifying a small group of experts with knowledge of effective dissemination methods for the field of integrated health care, providing technical assistance to groups of interested parties using methods such as web-based seminars, and developing enduring technical assistance products that can be stored on and accessed from the AHRQ website.