Casemix grouper
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Background
The primary objective of the New Zealand Mental Health Classification and Outcomes Study (CAOS) of 2002 was the development of the first version of a national casemix classification for specialist mental health services in New Zealand that built on the Australian MH-CASC project.
The CAOS study recommended that this first version casemix classification system be implemented into routine clinical practice, in order that routinely collected data be used to improve it.
Collection of the HoNOS (Health of the Nation Outcome Scale) outcome measure commenced in July 2005 with all District Health Board (DHB) mental health services.
What is casemix?
- Casemix is a way to group like ‘cases' of mental health care so outcomes can be compared.
- Casemix enables a better understanding of the real differences in outcomes between differing services.
- A casemix grouper will sort episodes into one of the 42 classes within the NZ-CAOS Casemix classification (PDF, 20KB)
- Classes are grouped into branches for Adults or Child and Youth, for example, Adult Inpatient Complete, Adult Inpatient Ongoing, Adult Community.
Developing a casemix grouper
Te Pou has linked this work with its Test Project environment to develop and implement a casemix grouper using data collected by the participating DHBs in the Test Project. Rules have been developed to ensure the collections are matched into 'casemix episodes' with a high degree of quality. Just under 50,000 casemix episodes are being analysed to check the internal and clinical validity of each of the rules. Results will be correlated with the CAOS findings and shared with participating DHBs.
The outcome of all of this work will feed into the development of casemix in PRIMHD.
Other resources
New Zealand Mental Health Consumers and their Outcomes, (PDF) a presentation by Professor Kathy Eager.
Australian Mental Health Outcomes and Classification Network (AMHOCN)
For more information
Contact Alison Bower, systems consultant.
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Page last updated: 23 March 2010