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Cost variation in child and adolescent psychiatric inpatient treatment

Beecham, Jennifer K., Green, Jonathan, Jacobs, Brian and Dunn, Graham (2009) Cost variation in child and adolescent psychiatric inpatient treatment. European Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, 18 (9). pp. 535-542. ISSN 1018-8827

Full text not available from this repository.
Identification Number: 10.1007/s00787-009-0008-9

Abstract

Publicly available costs data for child and adolescent psychiatric inpatient services do not allow links to be made with patients' needs and outcomes. Without this information commissioners may reduce the role of inpatient services on the basis of budgetary impacts alone. This study estimates the support costs before, during and after an inpatient admission and explores the associations between costs, needs and outcomes. A detailed prospective cohort study of eight child and adolescent units was undertaken in which participants were assessed at referral, admission, decision to discharge and 1 year later. Mean admission costs were pound24,120, although the range was wide. Associations were found between costs and patients' global impairment, age and exclusion status. Support costs after admission were similar to pre-admission costs, but there was some evidence to suggest that services were better targeted. Moves in England to develop national tariffs for inpatient psychiatric episodes should be based on the likely cost of the episode of treatment rather than costs per day, and good commissioning requires more information on the predictors of such costs.

Item Type: Article
Official URL: http://www.springerlink.com/content/101490/
Additional Information: © 2009 Springer-Verlag.
Divisions: Social Policy
Care Policy and Evaluation Centre
Subjects: R Medicine > R Medicine (General)
R Medicine > RA Public aspects of medicine > RA0421 Public health. Hygiene. Preventive Medicine
R Medicine > RZ Other systems of medicine
Date Deposited: 23 Feb 2011 10:35
Last Modified: 24 Sep 2024 19:12
URI: http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/32749

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