One of the major missions of the Humboldt County Chapter of the California Grand Jurors’ Association (HCC-CGJA) is to educate the public about the California Civil Grand Jury, and how it can influence change within county/city governments. The HCC-CGJA always looks for ways to improve communication between county/city governments and the residents of Humboldt County.
Recently,
the 2019-2020 Civil Grand Jury published eight reports each addressing a
different concern they investigated within county/city governments. One of
these reports, titled “BeHold: The Department of Mental Health’s Management of
the Public Guardian’s Office and Patients’ Rights Advocate,” contained a
recommendation to include the Patients’ Rights Advocate in all future
Continuous Quality Improvement (CQI) meetings without restrictions.
The
response by the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) opens a window
of opportunity to the residents of this county. Specifically, the response
indicates that Behavioral Health (BH) is in the process of changing the format
of its CQI meetings to include a public portion. This should allow public input
to address and improve the processes BH uses within our community.
In
an attempt to better understand Behavioral Health’s intent to include public
participation at CQI events, HCC-CGJA sent a request to the head of BH on Sept.
12, asking for additional information. As of the writing of this article, Sept.
22, HCC-CGJA has not received a response. Our request included:
- How are you defining public participation?
- Is public membership limited?
- How does a member of the public participate in these meetings?
- When can the public expect these public meetings to begin?
Without
specific answers to these questions HCC-CGJA is unable to provide the details
of how BH envisions changes to its CQI program to include the public.
What
we do know is that an appropriate CQI program focuses on processes rather than
individuals. This means it studies how services are provided to our community
members and not just if John Doe or Mary Smith received his services. It
recognizes both internal and external customers, which indicates it is just as
interested in the services BH provides to Child Welfare Services as it is in
the services provided to the general public. Finally, it promotes the need for
objective data to analyze and improve processes, expecting BH to collect data
such as how long steps in a process took to complete (time data), how many
hours they spent in completing a particular process step (cost data), and how
much they improved the lives of their clients (success rate data).
We
can therefore anticipate that BH will be opening up their CQI programs and data
analysis for public scrutiny. Such transparency should allow the public to
advocate for changed internal and external processes, based on sound data
analysis.
Behavioral
Health needs to understand that true CQI uses data points as discussed above,
and not names and addresses. Past Civil Grand Jury reports have indicated that
BH tends to “hide” its data and analysis behind the firewall of “need to know.”
Data has no personally identifiable characteristics. The public does need to
know and understand the processes and collected data BH uses to perform its
services. The public does not need to nor should it know which individuals and
families BH serves.
Time
will tell how BH plans to become more transparent to the public through the use
of an appropriate CQI program. HCC-CGJA will continue to monitor BH progress
and keep you informed as to any actions taken.
Eureka
Times-Standard
Timothy P. Hafner, president of HCC-CGJA, authored this monthly column on
behalf of the Humboldt County Grand Jurors’ Association. For information on the
Association email us: hcccgja@gmail.com.
October 4, 2020
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