NRI, through a collaborative partnership with SAMHSA’s Center for Behavioral Health Statistics and Quality (CBHSQ), SAMHSA’s Center for Mental Health Services (CMHS), and Eagle Technologies, Inc. works with all 59 states and U.S. territories to enhance their data reporting capacities, increase their use of data in system oversight and planning, and facilitate reporting of their Community Mental Health Block Grant performance measures and National Outcome Measures (NOMs). Each year, states and territories submit their Uniform Reporting System (URS) and Mental Health Client-Level (MH-CLD) Data to NRI for processing, review, and analyses.
The URS is a reporting system used by SMHAs to compile and report annual data as part of the SAMHSA’s Community Mental Health Block Grant. The URS is part of the Mental Health Block Grant Implementation Report, approved by the Office of Management and Budget, which SMHAs are required to submit to CMHS every December 1. The URS is part of an effort to use data in decision support and planning in public mental health systems and support program accountability. The URS, comprising 21 tables developed by the federal government in consultation with SMHAs, compiles state-by-state aggregate information, including numbers and sociodemographic characteristics of clients served by the states, outcomes of care, use of selected evidence-based practices, client assessment of care, insurance status, living situation, employment status, and readmission to state psychiatric hospitals within 30 and 180 days.
The general framework of MH-CLD reporting initiative involves a compilation of the demographic, clinical, and outcomes of clients served the SMHAs within a 12-month reporting period. The data reporting framework reflects SAMHSA’s interest in increasing correspondence to the behavioral health model within healthcare reform. Several factors were taken into consideration in developing the MH-CLD reporting specifications, such as (1) measures and categories that will continue to be important to SAMHSA and the states, (2) correspondence to SAMHSA’s Center for Substance Abuse Treatment’s Treatment Episode Data Set (TEDS) reporting systems, as feasible; (3) appropriate reporting of outcomes for mental health consumers, and (4) state comments on the feasibility and burden of reporting specific data elements. SAMHSA has given careful considerations of the reporting burden on states by limiting the required data elements to only the essential information for 5 of the 10 mental health National Outcome Measures.
2020 URS Tables and Information
2020 URS Table Instructions
2020 URS Data Definitions
2020 URS Tables
2019 SMI/SED Prevalence Estimates
2019-2020 Client Level Data Information
MH-CLD Instruction Manual Version 2.8
MH-CLD Data Crosswalk Template.xls
To learn more about this project, please contact [email protected].