Evaluation of a Standardized Method of Quality Assurance in Mental Health Records

Abstract

The widespread adoption of research-supported treatments by mental health providers has facilitated empirical development of quality assurance (QA) methods. Research in this area has focused on QA systems aimed at assuring the integrity of research-supported treatment implementation, while examination of QA systems to assure appropriate documentation of the implementation has received extant attention. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to pilot the initial development of a standardized QA system to assist mental health providers in effectively maintaining records of their implementation of a research-supported treatment. After a baseline of record-keeping errors was established, a QA program was implemented. Results indicated that QA audits were reliably conducted, frequency of errors decreased significantly upon the implementation of QA, and the QA program was determined to be feasible. A significant negative linear relationship was found between frequency of QA audits and frequency of errors. Study implications for research-supported treatments are discussed in light of these results.