Am J Psychiatry 1988; 145:210-213
Copyright © 1988 by American Psychiatric Association
Psychiatry under prospective payment: experience in the first year
CA Taube, JR Lave, A Rupp, HH Goldman and RG Frank
Division of Biometry and Applied Sciences, NIMH, Rockville, Md.
The authors present data on changes in resource use by Medicare psychiatric
patients in general hospitals after the introduction of the prospective
payment system in 1984. Length of stay and charges per discharge during
fiscal year 1984 fell 13.8% and 15.9%, respectively, after the new system
began, even though 31.8% of the discharges for Medicare psychiatric cases
were from exempt psychiatric units. The decrease in length of stay was
considerably larger (23.2%) in hospitals with no psychiatric units, which
were not exempt from prospective payment.
