The Supreme Council of Health (SCH) yesterday hosted a workshop to decide on performance measures for mental healthcare.

The measures will be collectively known as ‘mental health minimum data set’ (MHMDS), and enable the SCH to understand and compare health outcomes from multiple providers across the health system and monitor the successful delivery of mental health priorities.

The workshop was led by Kevin Smith, clinical projects manager at South London & Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust, to generate consensus on the clinical data set for mental health with Qatar’s key healthcare organisations, including Primary Health Care Corporation, Hamad Medical Corporation and National Health
Insurance Company.

Smith said: “MHMDS will support the delivery of Qatar’s national mental health strategy by providing comprehensive national activity data at a patient level, which is anonymised. MHMDS allows a better understanding of the population’s need for mental health services by generating high grade health intelligence. This in turn will inform research, service planning, service improvement and
performance management.”

MHMDS will contain record-level data about the care of children, adults and older people using mental health services and will help determine the level of mental health care needed in the community. The data set brings together key information from mental health care pathways that have been captured on clinical systems as part of patient care.

Critically the data will enable the SCH to understand the outcomes of treatment by people in contact with mental health services and enable Qatar to benchmark those patient outcomes against similar services
internationally.

As part of a quality information system, the data will provide a necessary foundation for clinical research and practice by providing access to robust, comprehensive, nationally consistent and comparable information. MHMDS will promote reflective practice, giving local clinicians and managers better quality information to facilitate clinical auditing and improve their services. The data will also help ensure evidence collected from mental health research translates into improvements in clinical practice and patient outcomes.