Question

How can we assure that the duration of a hospital admission is limited in time and how to avoid relapse (readmissions)?

Problem description

The hospitals are working with waiting lists, the psychiatrists are unable to make appointments within four weeks, and they can’t engage for crisis situations where a rapid adjustment of the treatment is necessary.  GP’s are available, but not well equipped to cope with mental health crisis situations

Impact - effect

It’s impossible for the mobile team to stabilise the situation of the patient without planning a hospital admission first, in situations where the treatment has to be adjusted.  The psychiatrist of the mobile teams doesn’t do prescriptions of medication.   Whether it is after being on the waiting list for a long time or being coercively admitted, one ends up being hospitalised in one way or another

To do

To do 1) make it possible to admit patients in the emergency department of hospitals, and immediately appeal to the mobile team to link with the “outside world” to reduce the duration of the hospitalisation.  Perhaps the psychiatrists of the ambulatory mental health services (but new types of ambulatory mh-services) could become the attending psychiatrists.

To do 2) in the meanwhile, the mobile team has to focus on relapse prevention, and making  a core business of psychoeducation, prevention, monitoring symptoms, compliance, information, etc.,  taking full account of the patient environment and the life context

Theme

Hospitalisation

Topic

Role of the mobile team when the user is admitted to hospital: inreach in residential units, early discharge

Reference -  contact

Delphine Gonton, Ghilbert Bérengère

Mobile team

2B

Project

Région Hainaut

Intership abroad - place

Lausanne / Yverdon (SIM)

Date

October 2012