Transforming Mental Health Care: Applying Performance Improvement Methods to Mental Healthcare

One in five U.S. adults experiences a mental illness within a given year. With more than 550,000 people working to support this underserved community, the mental healthcare system has grappled with inadequacies and shortcomings in safety, quality, and care delivery. There is a wide range of problems, from access-to-care issues and errors, to complications stemming from poor care. Our country is also on an unsustainable path as our healthcare expenditure keeps growing. To add to all of this, we are facing a rampant epidemic of burnout among healthcare workers. Modern advancements introduced with many promises―such as electronic medical records, newer medications, or advanced treatments―have created unique challenges when ushered into a highly regulated healthcare system.

What does it take to provide patients with everything they need―the right quality of care, at the right time, and at the right cost―to keep them healthy? Which process steps add value? Which steps are wasteful? A widely accepted fact is that a conservative 30-50% of every step in the mental healthcare process does not help patients feel better or stay better. When considering delays in care, workarounds, excessive documentation, and an overuse of auditing, the care system has moved highly skilled clinicians away from providing value, as administrative tasks continue to encroach on their time. There is a clear need to rethink and redesign the system of care.

This book is a primer for understanding the current state of the mental health system and the performance improvement skills and leadership acumen needed to address existing challenges. Sheppard Pratt, the award-winning, leading institution for mental healthcare in America, provided the focus on mental healthcare and became the laboratory for this body of work over the course of eight years. It hired a seasoned systems thinker with improvement expertise to work with mental health professionals and solve some of their most complex and chronic problems.

The book is a result of the collaboration between a practicing psychiatrist in a leadership role and the systems engineer. Working together, they demonstrate how to think about redesigning care and redefining the nature of work to enhance value for both the people served and the healthcare workforce. They crafted a multi-pronged approach towards culture change at Sheppard Pratt, including implementing a course on "Learning to Improve," which introduced staff to a performance improvement methodology. There are several vignettes interwoven throughout the book that describe the complexities and constraints of the system. Solving some of these challenges creates a new paradigm of work while minimizing waste and enhancing value.

Sunil Khushalani, MD, is a psychiatrist who specializes in Addiction Psychiatry. He is passionate about learning improvement science and integrating it into the field of mental health and addictions. This book is his first on the subject of improvement science as applied to mental health. For the last decade, he worked on teaching and integrating these ideas and methods at Sheppard Pratt.

He obtained his MBBS degree from Seth Gordhandas Sunderdas Medical College/ King Edward Memorial Hospital in Mumbai, India. He then completed his residency at the Department of Psychiatry at New York University Medical Center/Bellevue Hospital in 1997 and came to Sheppard Pratt in 2000. He is board-certified in Psychiatry by the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology. He is also certified by examination by the American Board of Addiction Medicine. He was recently serving as the Medical Director of Adult Services at Sheppard Pratt and the Service Chief of the Inpatient Co-occurring Disorders Unit at the Towson Campus of Sheppard Pratt. He also served as a physician advisor for the Stanley Research Group and the Operational Excellence team at Sheppard Pratt. Now, he works as the Chief Medical Officer for Kolmac Outpatient Recovery Centers.

He is also an Assistant Professor at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, and he has always maintained an interest in training psychiatry residents. He helped develop a course on 'Lean Problem Solving' at Sheppard Pratt and taught performance improvement to staff and psychiatry residents in the Sheppard Pratt System. He is a Distinguished Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association and a Fellow of the American Society of Addiction Medicine. He has been voted as a Top Doctor in Addiction Psychiatry by Castle Connolly and Baltimore Magazine.

He has conducted workshops and delivered many presentations on performance improvement in mental health at many regional, national and international meetings.

Antonio DePaolo, PhD, is a transformation executive and a Baldrige Fellow with over 22 years of experience in improvement science. This is his first book on improvement science applied to mental health and highlights his implementation work over more than seven years at Sheppard Pratt. Before that, Antonio spent 16 years in several industries, from automotive and transportation to life science and semiconductor packaging. He most recently ventured into healthcare by joining the University of Maryland Medical System as the Vice President of Transformation and Continuous Improvement for Upper Chesapeake Health. Antonio earned his B.S. in Industrial Engineering and Masters of Industrial Engineering from the University at Buffalo. He later completed his formal education with a Doctorate of Philosophy in Management with a focus on leadership and organizational change from Walden University. Throughout his career, Antonio had several mentors, including being mentored by Japanese Sensei while leading improvement efforts at a division of The Stanley Works located in Rhode Island. His major accomplishment was the full transformation of Wabash National, a struggling trailer manufacturer in Lafayette, Indiana, where he developed the manufacturing systems and laid the groundwork for improvement. As a result of his work, the company returned to revenue growth and profitability by removing a cumulative cost burden in excess of $250M and led to the organization winning The U.S. Senate productivity excellence award presented by Senator Richard Lugar. Antonio has volunteered his time to speak at local, national, and international settings and the American Psychiatric Association.