Am J Psychiatry 1978; 135:713-716
Copyright © 1978 by American Psychiatric Association
The paradoxical underutilization of partial hospitalization
EB Fink, R Longabaugh and R Stout
Partial hospitalization continues to be underutilized even though its
clinical effectiveness for a variety of psychiatric patients has been
demonstrated. The authors investigated the potential economic advantage of
partial hospitalization by comparing matched groups of day hospital
patients and inpatients who had comparable symptoms and prognoses on
admission. They present one-year follow-up data documenting the
comparability of the study groups on clinical outcome measures and the cost
advantages favorable the partial hospitalization group. They discuss
possible causes of the paradoxical underutilization of the clinically
effective and lower-cost partial hospitalization, which include
institutional factors, patients' clinical characteristics, family
resistance, and clinician bias.
