The array of psychiatric services in general hospitals

Abstract

This paper examines the frequency with which general hospitals with inpatient psychiatric units provide psychiatric emergency, outpatient, and partial hospital care. An analysis is presented of data from the 1988 American Hospital Association Annual Survey of Hospitals focusing on the number and proportion of general hospitals with psychiatric units that offer psychiatric emergency, outpatient, and partial hospital services. The vast majority (82.6%) of general hospitals with psychiatric units provided psychiatric emergency room services, approximately half (50.3%) provided psychiatric outpatient services, and slightly over a third (37.9%) offered partial hospitalization services. General hospitals with psychiatric units were more likely to provide outpatient psychiatric services if they were under private nonprofit or nonfederal governmental control than if they were under private for-profit control. General hospitals with inpatient substance abuse treatment services were more likely to provide complementary outpatient services than were general hospitals with inpatient psychiatric services (70.8% vs 50.3%). The result indicate that at half of the hospitals with psychiatric units, discharge planning necessarily involves referring patients outside of the hospital for continuing care.