Chapter 51 - Administration

Summary

Administration of emergency services for psychiatric patients typically resides with more than one person, and may include hospital business personnel, nurses and physicians with administrative duties, government agencies, and a board of directors. This chapter discusses an example case that includes a consultation model within a private hospital. Presently there are several means available to administrators to anticipate a community's need for emergency psychiatric services. The logistics in an emergency department (ED) essentially include patient arrival or referral to the ED, triage, evaluation and disposition. Typically, nursing staff triage patients based on acuity of their presenting problem. There are two basic models for hospital based psychiatric emergency evaluations: the consultation model and independent psychiatric emergency setting. Hospitals might employ measures of quality control in order to assess standards of care, use of resources, and outcomes such as consumer satisfaction or personnel retention.