Abstract
Currently, psychiatric patients classification for budgeting allocation’s purpose by employing diagnosis might be appropriate for acute disease but not implicitly to psychiatric cases. Psychiatric patients have their own special characteristics as follow: a requirement of joint symptoms’ diagnosis, less doctoral procedures, long average length of stay, various existing mental health assessments but not specifically designed for the purpose of budget allocation. The purposes of this research is to analyze various mental health assessments employed at Suan Prung Psychiartic Hospital and to study the correlation between mental health services cost and mental health assessment point given by hospital staff. The study is considered in the in-patient department by case mix method.Methods The retrospective study collected and collated information from 1,207 out of a total 3,715 cases from patients who came for services in in-patient department, Suan Prung Psychiartic Hospital during March to December 2002. Each selected individual patient for this study had to have 4 kinds of mental health assessments: Global Assessment of functioning Scale (GAF), Clinical Global Impressions (CGI), Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale (BPRS), and Assessment of Functioning form Mental Health Department. Individual’s information shall be periodically collected during each individual’ services stay. This study shall be employed a linear equation by categorizing costs into routine service costs, medical care costs, and individual drug costs. Results Our findings based upon 4 mental health assessments employed at Suan Prung Psychiartic Hospital show: significant correlation among individual assessment; Level of mental severity relate to level of services cost. The study shows that case mix of Schizophrenia, Paranoid and Acute psychotic disorders is the most costly, followed by Mood disorders; Mental retardation; Anxiety disorders, Eating disorders, Obsessive compulsive disorders, Personality disorders, Stress and Adjustment disorders; Alcohol Related; disorders and Drug Related, respectively. The following key factors directly affect mental health service costs in deceleration order: average length of stay, electro convulsive therapy, diagnosis, age, and gender.Conclusions After analyzing mental health assessments, our finding is health services costs are inconsistent between case mix and mental severity. Mental health assessments employed at Suan Prung Psychiartic Hospital that reflects budget allocation is GAF.
