The National Outcomes Management Project: a benchmarking collaborative.

Traditional evaluation of health care quality usually involves the measurement of the structure, process, and outcome of care. Most quality improvement programs involve a cycle that includes a setting of goals, a measurement of either process or outcomes, and a real-time or retrospective feedback of the results of data measurement. Benchmarking, a well-known efficient business technology, can lead to practice innovations necessary to survive in an environment that has a need for decreasing cost and increasing quality. The purpose of this article is to present a novel use of benchmarking in managed ambulatory behavioral health care and its application in a model collaborative outcome management project at more than 16 sites and nine states in the United States.