The Development of Psychiatric Services Providing an Alternative to Full-Time Hospitalization Is Associated with Shorter Length of Stay in French Public Psychiatry

Coralie Gandré, Jeanne Gervaix, Julien Thillard, Jean-Marc Macé, Jean-Luc Roelandt and Karine Chevreul
Additional contact information
Coralie Gandré: ECEVE, UMRS 1123, Université Paris Diderot, Sorbonne Paris Cité, INSERM, 75010 Paris, France
Jeanne Gervaix: ECEVE, UMRS 1123, Université Paris Diderot, Sorbonne Paris Cité, INSERM, 75010 Paris, France
Julien Thillard: ECEVE, UMRS 1123, Université Paris Diderot, Sorbonne Paris Cité, INSERM, 75010 Paris, France
Jean-Marc Macé: National Conservatory of Arts and Crafts, LIRSA, EA 4603, 75003 Paris, France
Jean-Luc Roelandt: ECEVE, UMRS 1123, Université Paris Diderot, Sorbonne Paris Cité, INSERM, 75010 Paris, France
Karine Chevreul: ECEVE, UMRS 1123, Université Paris Diderot, Sorbonne Paris Cité, INSERM, 75010 Paris, France

IJERPH, 2017, vol. 14, issue 3, 1-16

Abstract: International recommendations for mental health care have advocated for a reduction in the length of stay (LOS) in full-time hospitalization and the development of alternatives to full-time hospitalizations (AFTH) could facilitate alignment with those recommendations. Our objective was therefore to assess whether the development of AFTH in French psychiatric sectors was associated with a reduction in the LOS in full-time hospitalization. Using data from the French national discharge database of psychiatric care, we computed the LOS of patients admitted for full-time hospitalization. The level of development of AFTH was estimated by the share of human resources allocated to those alternatives in the hospital enrolling the staff of each sector. Multi-level modelling was carried out to adjust the analysis on other factors potentially associated with the LOS (patients’, psychiatric sectors’ and environmental characteristics). We observed considerable variations in the LOS between sectors. Although the majority of these variations resulted from patients’ characteristics, a significant negative association was found between the LOS and the development of AFTH, after adjusting for other factors. Our results provide first evidence of the impact of the development of AFTH on mental health care and will provide a lever for policy makers to further develop these alternatives.

Keywords: length of stay; alternatives to full-time hospitalization; psychiatry; mental health services; environmental characteristics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/14/3/325/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/14/3/325/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:14:y:2017:i:3:p:325-:d:93702

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().