The National Mental Health Services Survey-Locator survey (N-MHSS-Locator) will be a web and CATI data collection of all eligible mental health treatment facilities currently operating in the United States, its territories, and the District of Columbia. The N-MHSS-Locator will collect information at the facility or point-of-service level from those entities that provide mental health treatment services. In addition, eligible facilities must have a primary treatment focus of providing mental health, or an equal mix of mental health and substance abuse, treatment services. Facilities are excluded if they are: jails, prisons, or other organizations that provide treatment solely for incarcerated persons; or individual or small group mental health practices.
The resulting survey frame includes facilities that provide hospital inpatient services; residential services; and outpatient or day treatment or partial hospitalization services. It includes psychiatric hospitals, general hospitals with separate psychiatric units, outpatient clinics, residential treatment centers for both adults and children, and multi-setting (nonhospital) mental health facilities.
A full enumeration of all eligible mental health facilities is planned; therefore, no formal sampling plan is needed. A census survey is the preferred method for the N-MHSS-Locator because the data are meant to populate SAMHSA’s online Mental Health Facility Locator. The data will also be used to provide national-level and state-level counts on the number of mental health facilities available throughout the nation. The estimated universe of mental health facilities is expected to be approximately 15,000 facilities at the start of data collection (see column 1 of the table found in Section A.12).
The overall response rate for the full-scale N-MHSS conducted in 2010 was 94 percent. Because the N-MHSS-Locator survey is substantially shorter in length and will require less burden hour to respondents for completion, the expectation is that the response rate will reach that level as well.
The N-MHSS-Locator is designed to be a complete enumeration of all known specialty mental health treatment facilities in the nation. Respondents to the N-MHSS-Locator will complete the survey questionnaire via the web using a secure, password-protected dedicated survey website. Facilities that do not respond by web will be contacted by telephone and offered the option of completing the questionnaire by telephone (CATI). Instructional material including definitions of key terms, frequently asked questions (FAQs), and helpline/contact information will be available on an online information website (Attachment A.7). Examples of the advance letter and of the cover letter which includes a flyer with online questionnaire access instructions are included as Attachments A.4 and A.5.
The N-MHSS-Locator instrument is designed to collect the characteristics of facilities that provide mental health treatment services. These characteristics include: facility name; street address; telephone number; intake telephone number; website address; type of facility; ownership; service settings offered; treatment focus; age groups of clients served; selected types of mental health services offered; specialized service programs offered; languages spoken; and sources of payment accepted for services provided. To meet the need for a comprehensive and current enumeration of mental health facilities throughout the United States and its territories, it is imperative that the N-MHSS-Locator survey be fielded to provide the database for SAMHSA’s online Mental Health Facility Locator.
In preparation for fielding the N-MHSS-Locator, the survey frame will be updated by contacting various organizations related to the provision of mental health services and asking them for existing lists of the facilities they operate or represent. These organizations include state mental health agencies (SMHAs) and other state departments, national professional organizations and associations, and federal agencies, including the National Association of State Mental Health Program Directors, the National Association of Psychiatric Health Systems, the American Hospital Association, the American Residential Treatment Association, the American Association of Children’s Residential Facilities, the National Association of County Behavioral Health Directors, the National Council for Community Behavioral Healthcare, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS).
An advance letter will be sent to facilities to notify them that the survey is coming, inform them of the purpose of the N-MHSS-Locator survey and their potential inclusion on SAMHSA’s online Mental Health Facility Locator. The letter will also serve as tool for identifying closed facilities or facilities that have moved. Envelopes will be marked as “Return Service Requested” and undeliverable mail will be returned with new address information noted. The N-MHSS database will be updated with the new address and the advance letter will be resent. This will ensure that the majority of addresses in the database are current.
Several weeks later a survey packet will be sent to facilities that will include a cover letter from SAMHSA/CBHSQ that provides information about SAMHSA, the purpose of the survey, and how the information to be collected will be used to populate SAMHSA’s online Mental Health Facility Locator. The letter will also include the survey website address and the toll-free helpline telephone number. Enclosed with the cover letter will be the online questionnaire access instructions that contain the facility’s unique user ID and password, and the data collection procedures to be followed on the web.
Approximately three weeks after the initial mailing, a thank you/reminder letter will be sent to all facilities (a copy of this letter is included as Attachment A.6). For respondents who have not completed the web questionnaire 8 weeks after the survey packet mailing, reminder calls will be made through a CATI system, in which facilities will be encouraged to log on to the survey website and complete the survey online. If the opportunity arises during this call, interviewers will be trained to complete the full CATI interview if that is the facility’s preference. Once reminder calls have been completed, interview calls will be made to the facility director or the person designated by the director to schedule a time to complete the full CATI interview. Calls will be scheduled using an automated scheduler, and a message will be left after two attempts to contact the facility director. That message will include the survey helpline telephone number and a survey ID reference number for the facility director to use when returning the call.
Throughout this process, the survey frame will be managed through a centralized application, Facility Tracking and Data Editing System (F-TADES), a specially developed application that will store and organize facility information, and manage and monitor survey progress. WebServ2 (the web survey application) and Blaise (the CATI application) both interface with F-TADES, which stores contact information for each mental health facility in the survey frame file, and continuously tracks and monitors the status of each facility. The data from the web and CATI will be saved directly into the master data file in F-TADES. The web and CATI instruments will prevent and identify errors through the programming of edit specifications, thus, most web and CATI errors are resolved as the respondent completes the survey.
It is critical to make communication between the mental health treatment facilities and the government contractor conducting the N-MHSS-Locator survey for SAMHSA/CBHSQ as fluid and easy as possible. The following methods will be used to maximize response rate for the N-MHSS-Locator survey:
Advance letters from SAMHSA/CBHSQ addressed to mental health treatment facility directors/administrators that introduces the survey, explains its purpose, states the importance of the survey, and the value of participation. An emphasis will be placed on the importance of having accurate facility information listed in SAMHSA’s online Mental Health Facility Locator.
To handle undelivered mail resulting from the mail out of the letters, a return address service will be requested of the U.S. Postal Service. This service instructs the Postal Service to return undeliverable mail with a sticker showing the correct address. The facility’s contact information will then be corrected in the F-TADES database. For other returned mail, the contractor will attempt to determine the correct address (by use of the telephone and the Internet) and if found, update the database and re-send the letters to the correct location.
Tracing and locating efforts to determine if a facility is still in business, closed or merged with another facility.
The web survey allows facility respondents to complete the N-MHSS-Locator survey entirely on the Internet with editing procedures built into the online survey questionnaire.
A N-MHSS-Locator survey website will provide information, instructions, definitions, frequently asked questions (FAQs), and the web version of the questionnaire to facility respondents who will be able to access the site using the facility’s unique user ID and password.
Reminder letter and reminder calls to encourage facilities that have not yet responded by web to do so if they can.
Telephone interviews (CATI) with facilities that did not respond by web. It is expected that most facilities that do not complete the web questionnaire will complete the CATI.
A toll-free telephone helpline available for facilities to call with questions about the survey. Facilities can call the helpline to report a change in the facility director or contact person for the survey or to change an answer submitted in response to the questionnaire.
4. Tests of Procedures
A pretest is not planned for the N-MHSS-Locator. The survey
questionnaire is an abbreviated version of the 2010 full-scale
N-MHSS. Experience with the mental health facilities that responded
to that survey resulted in modest adjustments to the
wording of some questions in the proposed N-MHSS-Locator instrument
and the addition of a question to obtain the facility’s NPI
number (see Section A.8). The data collection procedures to be used
have also been well tested during the 2010 N-MHSS and the 2011
N-SSATS.
Synectics for Management Decisions, Inc. (Synectics) is the primary government contractor with overall responsibility for the project. Mathematica Policy Research (Mathematica) is the sub-contractor responsible for development of the survey frame, conducting the fieldwork for the N-MHSS-Locator and the creation of the final data file.
The Project Directors for this project are:
Synectics for Management Decisions, Inc. Mathematica Policy Research
Leigh Henderson, Ph.D. Geraldine Mooney, Ph.D.
1901 North Moore Street, Suite 900 600 Alexander Road
Arlington, VA 22209 Princeton, NJ 08540
703-528-2772 609-275-2249
LeighH@smdi.com GMooney@mathematica-mpr.com
The Statistical Consultants for this project are:
Sameena Salvucci, Ph.D. Eric Grau, Ph.D.
Mathematica Policy Research. Mathematica Policy Research
600 Maryland Avenue, Suite 550 600 Alexander Road
Washington,
DC 20024 Princeton, NJ 08540
202-250-3506 (609) 275-2249
ssalvucci@mathematica-mpr.com egrau@mathematica.mpr.com
The SAMHSA/CBHSQ Project Officers for this project are:
Cathie Alderks, Ph.D. (Project Officer) Laura Milazzo-Sayre (Alt. Project Officer)
Statistician Statistician
SAMHSA/CBHSQ SAMHSA/CBHSQ
1 Choke Cherry Road, Room 7-1012 1 Choke Cherry Road, Room 7-1008
Rockville, MD 20857 Rockville, MD 20857
240-276-1269 240-276-1764
Cathie.alderks@samhsa.hhs.gov laura.milazzo-sayre@samhsa.hhs.gov
List of Attachments
Attachment A.1— N-MHSS-Locator Questionnaire
Attachment A.2— N-MHSS-Locator Web Screens for Online Questionnaire
Attachment A.3— N-MHSS-Locator CATI Questionnaire
Attachment A.4— N-MHSS-Locator Advance Letter
Attachment A.5— N-MHSS-Locator Cover Letter and Online Questionnaire Access Instructions
Attachment A.6— N-MHSS-Locator Thank You/Reminder Letter
Attachment A.7—N-MHSS-Locator Online Information Site Materials
Attachment A.8— List of Expert Panel Members, November 2011
| File Type | application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.wordprocessingml.document |
| File Title | National Mental Health Services Survey (N-MHSS) Revision |
| Author | laura milazzo-sayre |
| File Modified | 0000-00-00 |
| File Created | 2021-01-30 |