Mental Health and Substance Use Treatment

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Department of Public Health

 

The San Francisco Health Network (SFHN) provides access to a comprehensive array of quality, culturally competent, and cost-effective mental health and alcohol and other drug treatment services, plus prevention, outreach, linkage, and education programs. 

Some individuals may receive both mental health and substance use services within SFHN in a reporting month. Therefore, some individuals will appear in the counts for both measures in a reporting month if they access both types of services.

Mental Health Treatment

This measure represents the unique number of individuals receiving at least one mental health service each month through the San Francisco Health Network (SFHN). In this context, “unique” means that an individual is counted only once during the month for this metric, regardless of how many mental health services received. 

Individuals receive mental health services that include: behavioral health in primary care; outpatient, outreach, linkage, and residential treatment in specialty mental health care; inpatient treatment; as well as services provided in the private provider network, at Laguna Honda Hospital, and at ZSFG for jail health clients. Mental health respite and most services in residential care facilities, prevention, vocational, peer-based and community based mental health promotion programs are not included in the metric at this time.

Number of individuals receiving a mental health service in the SF Health Network

Substance use treatment

This measure represents the unique number of individuals receiving at least one substance use treatment service each month through the San Francisco Health Network (SFHN). In this context, “unique” means that an individual is counted only once during the month, regardless of how many substance use services received. 

Individuals receive substance use services ranging from primary care to licensed and certified residential treatment, as well as residential stepdown, withdrawal management, outpatient and opioid treatment programs (buprenorphine, methadone). Substance use respite services, street outreach, contingency management and non-MediCal billing residential treatment programs are not included in the metric at this time

Number of unique individuals receiving a substance use service in the SF Health Network

 

How Performance is Measured

The Department of Public Health (DPH) will collect data from the SFHN electronic health record (EHR) system called “Epic” and from the Behavioral Health EHR called “Avatar”, until behavioral health service data collection migrates fully to Epic in 2024. Epic substance use data are pulled based on patient completed encounters in any department documented with an ICD-10 substance use diagnoses code. Epic mental health data are pulled based on patient completed encounters in any department documented with an ICD-10 mental health diagnosis code. Data from Avatar are based on billed services for substance use and/or mental health treatment.

Reporting for these two measures began in July 2023 . The scorecard previously reported measures with different definitions, sources, and methodology. In July 2023, the scorecard began reporting the newly revised two measures with a one-time collection historical monthly data through March 2023. Subsequent months will be reported monthly on a three-month lag (e.g. April will be reported by the end of August). DPH collects the data on a three-month lag because the counts are not available immediately after the close of the month and stabilize about three months later. Data from Avatar are pulled based on a specific code that distinguishes substance use from mental health services. Individuals may access multiple services over the reporting period, However, each individual is counted only one time per month for each metric.

The numbers displayed on the scorecard page represents a fiscal year average of the values in the chart above for both substance use and mental health treatment.

Additional Information

Visit the Department of Public Health's Home Page.

Data

Visit DataSF to access the scorecard data.