Goldsmith, LP; Smith, JG; Clarke, G; Anderson, K; Lomani, J; Turner, K; Gillard, S
(2020)
What is the impact of psychiatric decision units on mental health crisis care pathways? Protocol for an interrupted time series analysis with a synthetic control study.
BMC Psychiatry, 20 (1).
p. 185.
ISSN 1471-244X
https://doi.org/10.1186/s12888-020-02581-5
SGUL Authors: Goldsmith, Lucy Pollyanna
Abstract
Background
The UK mental health system is stretched to breaking point. Individuals presenting with mental health problems wait longer at the ED than those presenting with physical concerns and finding a bed when needed is difficult – 91% of psychiatric wards are operating at above the recommended occupancy rate. To address the pressure, a new type of facility – psychiatric decision units (also known as mental health decision units) – have been introduced in some areas. These are short-stay facilities, available upon referral, targeted to help individuals who may be able to avoid an inpatient admission or lengthy ED visit. To advance knowledge about the effectiveness of this service for this purpose, we will examine the effect of the service on the mental health crisis care pathway over a 4-year time period; the 2 years proceeding and following the introduction of the service. We use aggregate service level data of key indicators of the performance of this pathway.
Methods
Data from four mental health Trusts in England will be analysed using an interrupted time series (ITS) design with the primary outcomes of the rate of (i) ED psychiatric presentations and (ii) voluntary admissions to mental health wards. This will be supplemented with a synthetic control study with the same primary outcomes, in which a comparable control group is generated for each outcome using a donor pool of suitable National Health Service Trusts in England. The methods are well suited to an evaluation of an intervention at a service delivery level targeting population-level health outcome and the randomisation or ‘trialability’ of the intervention is limited. The synthetic control study controls for national trends over time, increasing our confidence in the results. The study has been designed and will be carried out with the involvement of service users and carers.
Discussion
This will be the first formal evaluation of psychiatric decision units in England. The analysis will provide estimates of the effect of the decision units on a number of important service use indicators, providing much-needed information for those designing service pathways.
Item Type: |
Article
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Additional Information: |
© The Author(s). 2020
Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.T he Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data. |
Keywords: |
Psychiatry, 1103 Clinical Sciences |
SGUL Research Institute / Research Centre: |
Academic Structure > Population Health Research Institute (INPH) |
Journal or Publication Title: |
BMC Psychiatry |
ISSN: |
1471-244X |
Language: |
en |
Dates: |
Date | Event |
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23 April 2020 | Published | December 2020 | Published |
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Publisher License: |
Creative Commons: Attribution 4.0 |
Projects: |
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URI: |
https://openaccess.sgul.ac.uk/id/eprint/111903 |
Publisher's version: |
https://doi.org/10.1186/s12888-020-02581-5 |
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