A Quality Improvement Project to Decrease the Length of Stay on a Psychiatric Adolescent Partial Hospital Program

Abstract

Clinicians are challenged to treat adolescents with life-threatening behaviors while accessing fewer mental health resources with increased utilization management pressures. Dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) skills training groups were implemented as a quality improvement project to decrease the length of stay on an adolescent psychiatric partial hospital program by reducing potential life-threatening behaviors. The average length of stay decreased nearly 5 days during the project. Potential life-threatening urges seemed to increase from pretreatment findings while life-threatening actions appeared to decrease. While the findings were inconclusive regarding the actual effect on life-threatening urges and behaviors, dialectical behavior therapy skills training groups may have positive outcomes on an adolescent psychiatric partial hospital program.