Act Now to Address Discrimination and Improve the Quality of Hospital Care for People With Mental Health Conditions

We have all heard, and experienced, troubling stories about what happens to people with lived experience in inpatient mental health hospitals or mental health units in general hospitals.

Did you know that psychiatric facilities aren't held accountable for how people with lived experience are treated?

After every other type of visit to a hospital, patients receive a survey called the Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS). The ratings on this survey actually influence the payments that facilities receive, which encourages hospitals to prioritize the patient experience. But people with mental health conditions are specifically excluded so hospitals are incentivized to improve care for everyone but people with mental health conditions. And the HCAHPS only applies to general hospitals so psychiatric hospitals have NO patient experience survey at all. This means that critical information about practices, like communicating about an individual's rights and treatment plan, adequately preparing a person for discharge, and providing one-on-one support, is not currently documented or used to improve inpatient services.

This discrimination must end.

For the first time, The Agency for Health Care Research and Quality (AHRQ) has issued a request for information seeking input on people’s experiences in psychiatric facilities – both in general hospitals and psychiatric facilities.  AHRQ is looking to address the gaps in gathering patient experience information from people with mental health conditions receiving care in an inpatient setting. Submitting a comment (and even sharing your story) with the agency can help ensure hospitals are held responsible for providing quality support and eliminating harmful practices in the future.

In the box to the right is a comment that you can submit to the agency.  We have added in the first part because we want to make sure that the agency can compare the experience of people with and without mental health conditions because stigma and discrimination often mean that people with mental health conditions get treated worse than other patients.  So as an equity issue, we want to compare the scores between people with different health conditions and across different kinds of facilities.  But the agency could add some questions specifically to capture unique experiences of psychiatric inpatient care, especially when it comes to rights and choices.  We added a few areas for them to consider but STRONGLY encourage you to edit the response and add your thoughts on what you think is important to measure. This can include examples from your inpatient experience.  They really want to hear from you and learn from your experiences so please tell them what is important to you and what questions you would like people to be asked after they get care in a facility. 

We need to act now to improve mental health care for people with lived experience and change lives.

Join us in submitting comments.

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