Community outreach for patients who have difficulties in maintaining contact with mental health services: longitudinal retrospective study of the Japanese outreach model project

BACKGROUND: Japan still has the highest ratio of beds devoted to psychiatric patients in the world. In 2011, in order to reduce re-hospitalization of patients who became disconnected from regular contact with outpatient medical services, the Japanese Ministry established the Japanese Outreach Model Project (JOMP). In this study, we will explicate the JOMP project protocol and investigate the rate and length of hospital admission, impairments of social function and problematic behavior at the follow-up period (6- and 12-month) and time of services provided by JOMP. METHOD: This longitudinal retrospective study used survey data collected from 32 outreach teams of 21 prefectures in Japan during September 2011 to July 2013. The outcome variables were assessed at baseline, 6-month and 12-month as to whether or not participants had been admitted to the hospital. Data from 162 participants with mental illness who had difficulties in maintaining contact with mental health services were analyzed. Repeated measures analysis of variance provided a significant effect of the intervention over time. RESULTS: The rate of hospital admission of JOMP participants was 24.1% at 6-months and 27.2% at the 12-month follow-up. The average length of hospital-stay at baseline and 12-months was 38.7 days (SD 84.7). Compared with the baseline, the average score of the Global Assessment Functioning and the Social Behavioral Schedule were significantly improved after the 6-month and 12-month follow-up. The activity log showed that among the most often delivered JOMP services were to “prevent exacerbation of somatic symptoms” and “care for families”. CONCLUSION: These results suggest that JOMP has a strong potential to both reduce readmission rates and the length of hospital stay compared with the Japanese regular outpatient care by public insurance, and improve social function and problematic behavior. The JOMP teams provided long-term support for families. As of April 2014 JOMP was included in the National Health Insurance program in a limited way therefore an evaluation of JOMP team fidelity on readmissions must be examined.