Performance Measures and Their Benchmarks for Assessing Organizational Cultural Competency in Behavioral Health Care Service Delivery

A project is described in which performance measures of cultural competency in behavioral health care were selected and benchmarked. Input from an Expert Panel representing the four major ethnic and racial groups in the U.S. and persons with extensive experience in implementing cultural competency in health care, along with survey data from 21 sites were used in the process. Measures and benchmarks are made specific to organizations that administrate care networks, and to service entities that deliver care. Measures were selected to parallel an implementation process, and benchmarks were set at “gold standard” levels.