Progress toward a performance measure for mental health based on a generic patient- reported outcome measure: Findings from the Veterans Outcome Assessment survey

•Patient-reported outcome-based performance measures could guide quality improvement.•Generic measures could apply to the full range of patients seen in a facility.•Changes in quality of life during care (MCS-12) are associated with quality measures.•But several issues must be resolved before using MCS-12 changes to measure quality. We report on studies conducted to develop outcome-based performance measures (PROM-PMs) based on generic patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs) that could support strategies for quality improvement applicable to all patients in a mental health system. Data were from the Veterans Outcome Assessment Survey at baseline and three months for the Mental Component Score (MCS-12), a widely used measure of mental health-related quality of life, for 15,540 outpatients beginning treatment in General Mental Health clinics in 140 Veterans Affairs (VA) facilities. Mental health diagnoses from medical records were coded using hierarchical categories. Mental health staffing levels and quality measures were from administrative data. Changes in MCS-12 scores were associated with demographics, baseline scores, and diagnostic categories; in fully adjusted models, differences between facilities accounted for only 0.5% of the total variance between patients. There were small but significant associations of both baseline and changes in MCS-12 scores with staffing levels and administrative measures of the quality of care that support the potential value of adjusted measures of changes in MCS-12 as a PROM-PM. Remaining issues include the low proportion of variability that can be attributed to differences between facilities and the associations of staffing and quality with possible case-mix adjustment variables.