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Participatory System Dynamics vs Usual Quality Improvement: Staff Use of Simulation as an Effective, Scalable and Affordable Way to Improve Timely Mental Health Care?
Sponsor: VA Office of Research and Development
Summary
Evidence-based VA care is best for meeting Veterans' mental health needs, such as depression, PTSD and opioid use disorder, to prevent suicide or overdose. But some key evidence-based practices only reach 3-28% of patients. Participatory system dynamics (PSD) helps improve quality with existing resources, critical in mental health and all VA health care. PSD uses learning simulations to improve staff decisions, showing how goals for quality can best be achieved given local resources and constraints. This study aims to significantly increase the proportion of patients who start and complete evidence-based care, and determine the costs of using PSD for improvement. Empowering frontline staff with PSD simulation encourages safe 'virtual' prototyping of complex changes to scheduling, referrals and staffing, before translating changes to the 'real world.' This study determines if PSD increases Veteran access to the highest quality care, and if PSD better maximizes VA resources when compared against usual trial-and-error approaches to improving quality.
Official title: Participatory System Dynamics vs Usual Quality Improvement: Is Staff Use of Simulation an Effective, Scalable and Affordable Way to Improve Timely Veteran Access to High-quality Mental Health Care?
Key Details
Gender
All
Age Range
18 Years - Any
Study Type
INTERVENTIONAL
Enrollment
720
Start Date
2021-07-22
Completion Date
2026-01-31
Last Updated
2026-05-11
Healthy Volunteers
Yes
Conditions
Interventions
Modeling to Learn (MTL)
Modeling to Learn is a facilitated health care quality improvement or evidence-based practice implementation strategy that includes frontline addiction and mental health staff running simulations of clinic improvement strategies to find the best approaches for improving the reach of evidence-based psychotherapy and evidence-based pharmacotherapy.
Usual quality improvement (QI)
Usual quality improvement is a health care quality improvement or evidence-based practice implementation strategy that includes frontline addiction and mental health staff reviewing data to find the best approaches for improving the reach of evidence-based psychotherapy and evidence-based pharmacotherapy.
Locations (1)
VA Palo Alto Health Care System, Palo Alto, CA
Palo Alto, California, United States