Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-8bhkd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-19T20:52:30.389Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Do care patterns change over time in a newly established mental health service? A report from the UK700 trial

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 April 2020

M. Fiander
Affiliation:
Department of Mental Health, St. George’s Hospital Medical School, London, UK
T. Burns*
Affiliation:
Department of Psychiatry, Warneford Hospital, University of Oxford, OxfordOX3 7JX, UK
O.C. Ukoumunne
Affiliation:
Murdoch Children’s Research Institute, Parkville, Vic., Australia
T. Fahy
Affiliation:
Institute of Psychiatry, Kings College, London, UK
F. Creed
Affiliation:
School of Psychiatry and Behavioural Sciences, Manchester Royal Infirmary, Manchester, UK
P. Tyrer
Affiliation:
Department of Public Mental Health, Imperial College School of Medicine, London, UK
S. Byford
Affiliation:
Centre for the Economics of Mental Health, Institute of Psychiatry, London, UK
*
*Corresponding author. Tel.: +44 1865 22 6474. E-mail address: [email protected] (T. Burns).
Get access

Abstract

Purpose.

Data on the process of mental health care is scant. Most studies focus on services at their inception when activity may be atypical and then usually present data only mean values for the reported variables over the whole study period. We aimed to test whether care delivery changes over time, and to describe any changes at the individual patient and team levels.

Methods.

Process data on 272 patients in three new intensive case management (ICM) teams were collected over 2 years. Interventions were prospectively recorded using clinician-derived categories. Changes over time are described at both patient and team level.

Results.

The number of contacts and the proportion of face-to-face activity were remarkably constant after the first month at the patient level. The proportion of ‘psychiatric’ interventions (main focus on medication or a specific ‘mental health’ intervention performed) increased greatly after the first 6 months. The care activity received by individual patients varied considerably. Overall, teams varied significantly in the extent to which their activity rates were sustained over time.

Conclusions.

New ICM teams deliver highly individualised care with more marked differences in treatment patterns between patients in the same team than mean differences between teams. The early ‘engagement’ period is marked by a greater focus on social care. There is evidence of differences in sustainability of the services by site.

Type
Original articles
Copyright
Copyright © Elsevier SAS 2006

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

UK700 Group Burns, T., Creed, F., Fahy, T., Thompson, S., Tyrer, P.et al.Intensive vs. standard case management for severe psychotic illness: a randomised trial. Lancet 1999;353:21852189.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
UK700 Group Creed, F., Burns, T., Butler, T., Byford, S., Murray, R.et al.Comparison of intensive and standard case management for patients with psychosis. Rationale of the trial. Br. J. Psychiatry 1999;174:7478.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Burns, T., Fiander, M., Kent, A., Ukoumunne, O.C., Byford, S., Fahy, T.et al.Effects of case load size on the process of care of patients with severe psychotic illness. Br. J. Psychiatry 2000;177(427):433.Google ScholarPubMed
UK700 Group Fahy, T., Kent, A., Tattan, T., Van Horn, E., White, I.Predictors of quality of life in people with severe mental illness: Study methodology with baseline analysis in the UK700 trial. Br. J. Psychiatry 1999;175:426432.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chatfield, C., Collins, A.J.Introduction to multivariate analysis. London: Chapman and Hall; 1980.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Everitt, B.S.The analysis of repeated measures: a practical review with examples. Statistician 1995;44(1):113135.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jones, M.C., Rice, J.A.Displaying the important features of a large collection of similar curves. Am. Stat 1992;46:140145.Google Scholar
Coid, J.Failure in community care: psychiatry's dilemma. BMJ 1994;308(6932):805806.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Wright, C., Catty, J., Watt, H., Burns, T.A systematic review of home treatment services. Soc. Psychiatry Psychiatr. Epidemiol 2004;39(789):796.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Burns, T., Priebe, S.The survival of mental health services: a pressing research agenda?. Br. J. Psychiatry 2004;185:189190.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Wing, J.K., Brown, G.W.Institutionalism and schizophrenia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; 1970.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stein, L.I., Test, M.A.An alternative to mental hospital treatment. In: Stein, L.I.Test, M.A.Alternatives to mental health hospital treatment. New York: Plenum Press; 1978.Google Scholar
Holloway, F., Oliver, N., Collins, E., Carson, J.Case management: a critical review of the outcome literature. Eur. Psychiatry 1995;10:1978. p. 113128.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Smilkstein, G.The family APGAR: a proposal for a family function test and its use by physicians. J. Fam. Pract 1978;6(6):12311239.Google ScholarPubMed
Submit a response

Comments

No Comments have been published for this article.