Maryland Behavioral Health Services
Challenge
Maryland Behavioral Health Administration was struggling to achieve consistent, high-quality, inpatient care in the state’s five psychiatric hospitals.
Solution
IdeaCrew helped Maryland implement a single system of high-quality psychiatric hospital care to improve overall quality of care across the state.
The State of Maryland, Department of Health, Behavioral Health Administration needed to create a system of care that provided consistent, high-quality inpatient psychiatric care in all state psychiatric hospitals as part of achieving its goals.
The administration contracted with IdeaCrew to review and make recommendations relating to the implementation of a single system of hospital care to improve the overall quality of care in the State’s five psychiatric hospitals.
IdeaCrew’s clinical consulting team worked with Maryland Behavioral Health Services (BHS) to identify excellent programs or practices at particular hospitals that could be used across the system. Similarly, we were asked to identify challenges faced by some or all of the hospitals the impacted patient care.
What We Did
- Evaluated BHS programs using national standards, established by the National Association of State Mental Health Program Directors (NASMHPD)
- Conducted onsite interviews at all five hospitals with State and local officials, consumers and line staff collecting data that identified several strengths and challenges within the system
- Developed a series of recommendations regarding leadership; culture and treatment; communication; policies; data, risk and safety; Human Resources; and, centralized admissions processes.
Results
Our initial evaluation took two months. We delivered the deeper dive into specific programs and processes within five months. Our recommendations standardized treatment of patients in forensic status facing criminal charges to aid their process of recovery while hospitalized. As a result, patients were treated in a manner similar to those whose hospitalization did not initiate through court intervention. The Deputy Secretary for Behavioral Health accepted our recommendations and began the task of initiating the changes necessary as part of its change strategy.