Measuring Access to Mental Health Services Among Primary Care Patients

The lifetime risk of mental health disorders is almost 50% and, in any year, about 25% of the population have a psychiatric disorder. Many of those people are cared for in primary care settings.

Measure access to mental health services, such as getting counselling or prescription mental health medications, using new patient survey questions that can be added to Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (CAHPS) surveys.

Surveys were conducted with a stratified probability sample of patients receiving primary care services in a single state in 2018-2019. Medicaid and privately insured patients were surveyed by mail or telephone, respectively.

Approximately 14% of sampled patients responded to a survey. More than 10% of privately insured respondents and about 20% of Medicaid respondents got or tried to get appointments for mental health care. About 15% of privately insured respondents and 11% of Medicaid respondents reported problems getting appointments with counselors. Only 8%-9% of respondents seeking mental health medicines reported problems getting appointments for prescriptions. A composite measure combining access to counselors and prescribers of mental health medicines evidenced adequate internal consistency reliability. Group level reliability estimates were low.

Many respondents got or tried to get mental health services and a substantial number reported problems getting appointments or getting mental health prescriptions. The tested questions can be combined into an Access to Mental Health Care measure, which can be included in patient experience surveys for ambulatory care to monitor access to behavioral health care.