The IAPSRS toolkit: Development, utility, and relation to other performance measurement systems

The current climate of economic constraint in community-based mental health services has all but required psychosocial rehabilitation (PSR) programs to demonstrate their effectiveness by adopting outcome assessment systems. Agencies of disparate size and varying degrees of sophistication are now responding to mandates to systematically monitor program outcomes. In doing so, however, PSR practitioners and administrators are faced with a bewildering array of competing measures, some of which are impractical, costly, or irrelevant for capturing the outcomes of PSR services (Blankertz & Cook, 1998). To acquaint readers with issues in performance measurement in PSR, this article describes a newly developed outcome measurement system created to document the achievements of service recipients in PSR programs and to monitor progress towards recovery. We discuss principles and logistical issues in performance measurement which are important to PSR agencies and which the Toolkit has been designed to address. Results of the pilot testing of the PSR Toolkit are presented to demonstrate the feasibility of its use, logistical problems in implementation, psychometric properties of the measures, and the Toolkit's sensitivity to change. We discuss next steps in the development of the Toolkit.