A TWO-YEAR REVIEW OF AN ‘OPEN ACCESS’ MULTIDISCIPLINARY COMMUNITY PSYCHIATRIC SERVICE FOR THE ELDERLY
✍ Scribed by KAMAL GUPTA; LINDI COUPLAND; EAMONN FOTTRELL
- Publisher
- John Wiley and Sons
- Year
- 1996
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 337 KB
- Volume
- 11
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 0885-6230
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
✦ Synopsis
This article presents findings from the first 2 years of a community-based multidisciplinary open access service in an urban area. Eleven hundred and twenty-one referrals were received for 971 patients. Twenty-three per cent of all community referrals were made by non-traditional agencies, of which 90% were found to suffer from a formal mental disorder. For the whole sample, dementia (40.6%) and depression (19.5%) were the most common diagnoses and social workers referred proportionately fewer patients suffering with depression (7.8%). The mean length of hospital stay reduced from 87.22 days to 58.25 days over a 3-year period. There was an increase in readmission rates and the bed occupancy remained the same (approximately 94%) in spite of a 25% reduction in available bed days. Both GPs and patients expressed satisfaction with the services provided.