[An instrument for evaluating the psychiatric personnel regulation]

Since 1991, the Psychiatrie-Personalverordnung (Psych-PV) regulates the allocation of personnel in German psychiatric hospitals and psychiatric wards. Psych-PV defines the personnel's diagnostic and therapeutic tasks based on an illness severity scale. A group of experts from the Medical Advisory Services of Social Security--Health Insurance (MDK) has developed a questionnaire as an instrument to systematically gather, from a given hospital, structural data relevant for application of Psych-PV. The questionnaire consists of two parts, relating to the hospital and to the individual wards. The hospital supplies information such as statutory catchment area, types of care offered, capacity, personnel, organisational structure, patients' diagnoses, and co-operation with complementary institutions. The section pertaining to individual wards collects data on admission and discharge, duration of treatment, re-admissions, and internal transfer. The distribution of the severity of patients' illnesses within individual wards, which has been defined in the budget, is the basis for a review of the actual number of staff as well as of the realization of basic tasks of diagnostics and treatment. Questions pertaining to treatment concepts in individual wards are aimed to ascertain the degree of agreement with the conceptual goals of Psych-PV. The methods of treatment offered in a given ward can be gleaned from its weekly organisation-plan. Indications for the realization of basic tasks of diagnostics and treatment can be derived from the information supplied by each personnel group of a ward with regard to specific tasks of individual and group treatment. The questionnaire developed by the MDK in Hessen allows to review the extent to which the allocation of staff according to Psych-PV on the level of the individual ward translates into appropriate treatment options. The questionnaire also offers a basis for a comparison of hospitals.