Customer Driven Mental Healthcare and the Role of the Mental Healthcare Consultant

Healthcare, including mental healthcare, is in the midst of revolutionary change. The simultaneous demands for increasing quality and constraining costs have necessitated the search for a new service delivery paradigm. The Total Quality Management (TQM) model has been introduced into healthcare under the term Continuous Quality Improvement (CQI). In order to meet the demands being placed upon it, mental healthcare is beginning to introduce the "patient-customer" into its quality improvement programs. The transition to a customer driven framework will be a difficult one for many mental healthcare practitioners. Mental healthcare consultants (i.e., consultants with knowledge of organizational processes and mental healthcare issues) can facilitate this transition by helping mental healthcare administrators and practitioners align around the goal of improved quality of care, defined in terms of both patient outcome and patient satisfaction.