Service penetration by persons with severe mental illness: How should it be measured?

Abstract

As performance indicators and outcomes measures become essential parts of doing business, providers of mental health services are developing and using a number of access measures. One that is being used with increasing frequency is service penetration. However, the lack of standard methods for calculating and reporting service penetration has made the comparison of penetration rates cross studies difficult. This article discusses the conceptualization and operationalization of service penetration. In addition, it presents an exploratory study of service penetration using data from the same persons using very different data sources; these data were collected during an evaluation of a Medicaid managed care system in Florida. The article offers recommendations for the use and reporting of service penetration rates.

Outcomes for Implementation Research: Conceptual Distinctions, Measurement Challenges, and Research Agenda

“…This definition is similar to (Stiles et al 2002) notion of service penetration and to Rabin et als’ (2008) notion of niche saturation. Studying services for persons with severe mental illness, Stiles et al (2002) apply the concept of service penetration to service recipients (the number of eligible persons who use a service, divided by the total number of persons eligible for the service). Penetration also can be calculated in terms of the number of providers who deliver a given service or treatment, divided by the total number of providers trained in or expected to deliver the service.…”

Access to Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services

“…Within the access domain, utilization rates are recognized to be one of the most direct and efficient measures of this broad concept. Current thinking in mental health program evaluation has increasingly focused on utilization rates as the prime measure of access to care (Styles et al, 2002). This focus is not new.…”

Efficacy of a Process Improvement Intervention on Delivery of HIV Services to Offenders: A Multisite Trial

“…10,11 Effective HIV prevention models for correctional populations have been identified, 12, 13 but transferring these programs from carefully controlled trials into real-world practice is difficult, 14,15 and few studies have tested the implementation processes in field settings. 14,16 Quality improvement strategies have become common in health care systems.…”