The Met Needs Index: a new metric for outcome assessment in mental health services

No apt method has been available to assess and monitor the responsiveness of services in meeting ongoing needs of patients with long-term mental illness. The present study examines the utility of a new metric for such a purpose, the Met Needs Index (MNI), applied to the Camberwell Assessment of Need (CAN).

The MNI was estimated as an aggregated measure of met need or beneficial outcome, based on annual staff rated CAN-assessments of 321 outpatients (76% psychotic disorders) in psychiatric care during 7 years. Corresponding confidence intervals were estimated with the bootstrap percentile method.

The overall MNI was estimated at 0.71 (95% CI 0.69-0.74), indicating that identified needs in general were met during 71% of the intervals between the annual assessments. However, the MNI for specific need domains of the CAN ranged from 0.89 (95% CI 0.84-0.93) for 'food' to 0.11 (95% CI 0.07-0.16) for 'sexual expression', indicating a significant variation in responsiveness of services to different types of need in this patient population.

The MNI seems to be a useful and powerful metric for outcome assessment and monitoring of psychiatric services from a needs assessment approach.