Justification

Customer Satisfaction Survey for

The Center for Mental Health Services (CMHS)

Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA)

A. Product/Activity to be Assessed:

The Center for Mental Health Services (CMHS) leads the Federal effort to improve mental health treatment and prevention services for all Americans.

The CMHS Mission is to promote effective mental health services in every community. CMHS provides national leadership to ensure the application of scientifically established findings and practice-based knowledge in the prevention and treatment of mental disorders; to improve access, reduce barriers, and promote high quality effective programs and services for people with, or at risk for, these disorders, as well as for their families and communities; and to promote an improved state of mental health within the Nation, as well as the rehabilitation of people with mental disorders.

CMHS activities include:

• Promoting consumer participation in the design, financing, and delivery of mental health and related support services.

• Collecting new data, critically evaluating CMHS initiatives to determine what works, and disseminating the latest information to the field in support of the nation’s move toward managed care delivery systems in the public sector,

• Working with other Federal agencies and private sector organizations whose programs and policies enhance mental health services delivery and advance policy development.

To help Americans lead healthier and longer lives, CMHS supports Programs of Regional and National Significance that promote a structured, community-based approach to mental health treatment and prevention. CMHS’ portfolio of programs is strategically designed to advance transformation of the nation’s mental health system through the effective delivery of products and services that build resilience and facilitate recovery.

The provision and coordination of these programs and services entail frequent interaction with Federal and non-Federal customers. CMHS desires to assess how well staff members are meeting our customers’ requests and needs across the various service areas.

B. Brief statement of objectives of the proposed customer satisfaction effort, including specific identification of who will use the resulting information and how they will use it:

The purpose of the customer satisfaction survey is to solicit feedback and suggestions on how to improve the quality and efficiency of CMHS services. In keeping with the notion of creating a customer-focused and customer-driven organization, the objectives of the proposed customer satisfaction survey effort are:

• to find out how well CMHS staff are presently meeting customers’ needs;

• to determine if CMHS employees need additional training on how to understand and be actively responsive to customers’ requests;

• to make each CMHS employee more aware of the importance of continuously seeking to improve the quality of both the programs and services we provide; and

• to cause CMHS staff to examine and perhaps to decide that some refocusing of our internal structure may be in order so as to help create a Center that functions more serviceably, efficiently, and economically.

A staff member within CMHS will analyze the survey responses. That individual will compile quantitative and qualitative data from the responses. The quantitative analyses will include frequency and percentage distributions of ratings. These will be provided for all of CMHS and will also be broken down by division and office.

A monthly report will be provided to the Director and Deputy Director of the Center for Mental Health Services/Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration that will include tables and summaries of quantitative data, and analyses of qualitative data, such as suggestions for improving service. Below are samples of a table.

Overall Satisfaction for All Services:

	Very Satisfied	Satisfied	Dissatisfied	Very Dissatisfied
Percent (N= )	20	65	10	5

Ratings: Responsiveness, Courtesy, Quality, Efficiency, Follow-through/Follow-up. There will also be a table for each of these categories (example below).

Responsiveness:

	Excellent	Good	Fair N/A	Poor
Percent (N = )	45	35	15	5

The CMHS Director and Deputy Director will work through the CMHS Division/Office Directors to provide feedback from the survey results to CMHS staff members. Staff may also work together to determine how to enhance those strengths identified by the survey and conversely how to overcome or improve identified weaknesses. Should systemic changes need to be made due to the survey results, the CMHS Director and Deputy Director will work with CMHS Senior Staff, in consultation with other SAMHSA Senior Staff, to design any appropriate changes.

C. Overview of methods to be used to collect the information:

All recipients of outgoing e-mails from CMHS staff will have the opportunity to click on a hot link embedded at the end of each outgoing e-mail and will be invited to provide feedback on the sender’s customer service by completing the Customer Satisfaction Survey. The hot link will be introduced with the following message: “The Center for Mental Health Services values your feedback. Please click on the following link to complete a brief customer survey.”

The Customer Satisfaction Survey will be available to all customers receiving e-mails from CMHS staff. Because of the nature of the survey, we anticipate receiving a response rate of approximately two (2) percent. There are no plans for follow-up to those who choose not to respond.

The responses of those who choose to take part in the survey will go from the respondent via the Web directly to a database file. The Web site will keep no record of where the responses came from, thereby maintaining the confidentiality of customers who do not self-disclose. Additionally, name, phone number and organization are designated as optional information on the survey.

D. Annual response burden estimate:

Both Federal and non-Federal customers use CMHS services. However, the numbers below are based on non-Federal customers. Non-Federal recipients of e-mails containing the link to the Customer Satisfaction Survey have an estimated average salary of $60,000. The draft customer satisfaction survey was given to less than nine non-Federal respondents to provide feedback on the usefulness of the questionnaire and the time to complete. Respondents averaged approximately 4 minutes.

(1) 150 respondents annually x 4 minutes = approximately 10 hours yearly.

(2) 10 hours x $30.00 per hr. = $300.00 yearly.

(3) This will involve no startup or operational/maintenance costs to respondents.

Respondents	# of respondents	# responses/ respondent	Hours/ response	Total burden hours	Hourly wage rate ($)	Total cost/ year ($)
Non-Federal Customers	150	1	.067	10	$30	300.00

E. Methods used to develop and test the questions (attach a copy of the questionnaire):

The CMHS Director and Deputy Director have tailored and refined a survey that was used by another component within the Department of Health and Human Services that has a similar mission to CMHS in that they provide services to a large variety of non-Federal customers.

The proposed survey questionnaire was shared with nine individuals outside of CMHS. These individuals were asked for their review and comment. All of the comments received were favorable, and no changes were suggested.

A staff member within CMHS will analyze and compile frequency and percentage distributions. Quantitative and qualitative data will be compiled and reported monthly to the Director and Deputy Director of the Center for Mental Health Services.

Since CMHS is not certain which types of services will elicit the most responses, we are asking an open-ended question about which services were received. An analyst will review the types of services mentioned and group them by CMHS Division for the purposes of analysis. Finer analysis of a particular service provided by a Division may also be possible, depending on the number of responses about that particular service.

CMHS anticipates that analysis of these responses will permit the development of a list of the most frequently mentioned services. We could then provide that checklist to respondents in future versions of the questionnaire so the respondent could then select the type of service received.

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