How to use

The NOCC is the national specification of a set of standardised measures of consumer symptoms and functioning and a protocol for their collection at key points of care within public specialised clinical mental health services. The main aims of the National Outcomes and Casemic Collection (NOCC) were to support development of:

• routine use of outcome measures in all publicly funded or managed mental health services, where such measures contribute to both improved practice and service management;

• an informed mental health sector, in which benchmarking is the norm, with each service having access to regular reports on its performance relative to similar services that can be used in a quality improvement cycle;

• a culture of research and evaluation within mental health services and academic institutions that supports reflection on practice and debate about ongoing development; and

• the informed use of casemix to understand the role of variation between agencies in costs and outcomes.

To support these aims, training resources have been developed, national benchmarking work has been undertaken and various special projects are underway. Innovative work is also being undertaken in the States and Territories by individual teams and services. To facilitate sharing of information about these jurisdictional efforts, we have created a new section on our website called What Others Are Doing. We encourage you to submit your projects so that others can gain ideas about using the ouctome measures to support clinical practice and to facilitate service delivery.