Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service Management Strategies that may Influence Wait Times.

OBJECTIVES (1) To describe the strategies employed by child mental health agencies to manage service demands; (2) to determine whether the types of strategies used are related to meeting Canadian Psychiatric Association (CPA) benchmarks and wait times; and, (3) to determine whether the types of strategies used are related to agency characteristics. METHODS An online questionnaire was distributed to 379 agencies providing child mental health services in Canada. The survey inquired about agency characteristics, wait times, ability to meet benchmarks and a series of strategies which may impact wait times. Spearman's rank correlations were used to determine relationships between variables. RESULTS One hundred thirteen agencies returned adequately completed surveys (29.8%). Collaborating with other agencies/providers and referring families to self-help resources were the most commonly endorsed strategies. The use of more upstream/ pre-waitlist strategies was related to the ability to meet CPA benchmarks for urgent cases. No cluster of strategies was related to estimated wait times. Restriction strategies were most consistently related to agency size. CONCLUSIONS Multiple strategies were endorsed by many agencies, but very few demonstrated relationships to wait time variables. Rigorous evaluation of commonly used service strategies are required to determine whether any positive impacts are being obtained by such efforts.