Toward the Implementation of Mental Health Consumer Provider Services
Discusses how to implement innovations within organizations
The impact of dissemination efforts will be maximized when they:
- Are based on assessed needs, barriers, and incentives of targeted end users
- Secure support and involvement form local stakeholder groups and opinion leaders in the planning process
- Use expert involvement in planning, especially for complex practices
- Use marketing principles for developing and disseminating intervention tools
- Provide sufficient education, resources, and tools to support adoption
- Use monitoring and feedback to reinforce performance
Ways to overcome implementation challenges of a Consumer Provider (CP) service
- Screen potential CPs
- Training and supervision
- “Marketing” to providers to obtain buy-in, which would include providing research evidence, having current CPs talk to groups of providers, eliciting their fears and then systematically addressing them
- Delineate clear roles for the CPs
- Be consistent with other successful CP efforts
- Have sufficient structure to the program
Framework for implementing new CP services
Any new CP service would require gaining support from top management as well as some level of buy-in from all levels of an organization. Gaining support from family members a d family organizations such as NAMI will be important to facilitate such a culture change.
Form an implementation team with representation from top leadership as well as other key stakeholders. Team is responsible for fostering supportive organizational culture and addressing environmental barriers.
Develop the structure of the CP service including the specific roles, hiring procedures, trainings offered, and policies that govern the relationships between CPs and those to which they provide services.
The program will need to demonstrate feasibility and utility by tracking the level of activity and impacts on process and outcomes will help facilitate acceptance as well as provide data for ongoing improvement.
Overcoming challenges to the implementation of CP services
Hiring (be as clear as possible about the job functions), job structure (focus on small wins, if stakeholders are resistant to the idea of CPs having clinical responsibilities, then its okay to focus on providing education and mutual support and build on that in the future. Use certification programs, hire more than one to take demands off the one and to demonstrate systems commitment; supervision that focuses on job performance, career development and feedback rather than personal issues. Career track.), dual relationships (policies must be clear, communicated broadly, consistent w ethical standards, reliably enforced, and locally developed w input from multiple stakeholders