The authors describe an effort to develop criteria for utilization
review of treatment for suicide attempters. Explicit criteria proposed by a
panel of experts as essential determinants for hospitalization of these
patients were compared with actual clinical practice. It was found that
according to the experts' criteria (which were operationalized into rating
assessments), over half of the outpatient sample should have been
hospitalized. After multiple regression analysis was carried out on the
criteria, however, four predictors showed that only 20 percent of the
outpatients should have been hospitalized. The authors discuss the issues
these findings raise about the criteria of the experts, their utility for
research, their validity, and their implications for utilization
review.Abstract Teaser