Managed care programs establish procedures to help their patients avoid
use of psychiatric emergency services. To determine whether managed care
patients who do visit the emergency service do so primarily for
hospitalization and have briefer contacts with the service because of
preapproval for hospitalization, records were examined for 293 patients who
visited a psychiatric emergency service; 69 were enrolled in a managed care
plan. The findings did not confirm the expectations: many managed care
patients received crisis services and were referred for outpatient care.
The non-managed-care group had more psychotic and substance use disorders,
required more emergency community intervention, and had more previous
psychiatric hospitalizations.
Abstract Teaser