Duration of bed occupancy as calculated at a random chosen day in an acute care ward. Implications for the use of scarce resources in psychiatric care

BACKGROUND: Psychiatric acute wards are obliged to admit patients without delay according to the Act on Compulsive Psychiatric Care. Residential long term treatment facilities and rehabilitation facilities may use a waiting list. Patients, who may not be discharged from the acute ward or should not wait there, then occupy acute ward beds. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Bed occupancy in one acute ward at a random day in 2002 was registered (n = 23). Successively, the length of stay of all patients was registered, together with information on waiting time after a decision was made on further treatment needs. Eleven patients waited for further resident treatment. The running cost of stay was calculated for the acute ward and in the different resident follow-up facilities. Twenty-three patients consumed a total of 776 resident days. 425 (54.8%) of these were waiting days. Patients waited up to 86 days. RESULTS: Total cost of treatment was 0.69 million Euro (0.90 mill. $), waiting costs were 54.8% of this, 0.38 million Euro (0.50 million $). The difference between acute care costs and the costs in the relevant secondary resident facility was defined as the imputed loss. Net loss by waiting was 0.20 million Euro (0.26 million $) or 28.8% of total cost. DISCUSSION: This point estimate study indicates that treating patients too sick to be released to anything less than some other intramural facility locks a sizable amount of the resources of a psychiatric acute ward. The method used minimized the chance of financially biased treatment decisions. Costs of frustration to staff and family members, and delayed effect of treatment was set to zero. Direct extrapolation to costs per year is not warranted, but it is suggested that our findings would be comparable to other acute wards as well. The study shows how participant observation and cost effectiveness analysis may be combined.