Risk & Quality Management in Mental Health

Mental health providers, such as psychiatrists or psychologists, are responsible for providing risk-free, high-quality standards of care to their mental health patients. It is essential for providers to conduct routine risk assessments and quality-management audits to gauge the effectiveness of their services to patients.

Risk Assessment

• Risk assessments are tools used to collect data, which tell mental health providers how likely, or unlikely, a mental health patient is to harm himself or others. Risk assessments are screening tools that tell medical providers whether a patient may need a psychiatric evaluation, an increase in psychotropic medications or hospitalization, according to a May 2007 article in the Psychiatric Times.

Quality Management

• Monitoring the quality of mental health services lets medical providers know how much progress their patients can make based on the services provided to them. Auditing tools are used to capture clinical performance measures, such as the Health Plan Employer Data & Information set. HEDIS is a collection of performance measures that rate the quality of providers, according to the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.

Significance

• Risk and quality management must be measured and monitored in the mental health industry in order for mental health providers to keep their patients safe. Patients who are not closely monitored risk having relapses or regressing to a point that causes them to be a danger to themselves.