Assessing the Productivity of a State Mental Health Service System

State agencies are charged with ensuring the productive use of resources in the ambiguous and controversial mental health segment of the public health sector. Equity, efficiency, and effectiveness are difficult for these agencies to measure because of undefined system boundaries, decentralized control of resources, conflicting outcome expectations, and uncertainty about the most appropriate technology. The authors suggest the dual remedies of a consolidated human service agency approach to mental health service provision and a series of mental health program designs with built-in measurement tools.