The National Mental Health Information Strategy
This strategy was produced in 2005 and an Implementation Plan followed in 2006. The strategy aims to improve the collection and use of the two types of mental health information:
1. Information collection to support delivery of care to individual consumers (commonly collected by patient management systems).
2. Information collected to support the management of mental health service systems e.g. for funding, planning, monitoring and policy development.
Neither of these publications is available in hard copy so to assist we have summarised some of the points and themes from the documents.
Key Points:
- The need for good quality information to support the development of mental health services has been recognised in several reports.
- Mental health service providers have already invested substantially in the collection and use of current information. The plan suggests activities to enhance what has already been accomplished.
- Rapid advances in technology by 2010 coupled with increasing demands by both consumers and their whanau for shared power in therapeutic relationships will drive a revolution in the creation of “new knowledge” – “new” in the sense that people who participate in the consumers system of care, rediscover, critically evaluate and then apply the information that will be available to them.
- The change in the way information is used may be the single most important change that needs to occur in the mental health system. People want to know if the services they provide really contribute to the process of recovery and on the basis of their findings, will change what they do to improve that contribution.
