Evidence based practice: decreasing psychiatric revisits to the emergency department

Inpatient psychiatric settings anticipate changes in reimbursement that will link payment rates to objective quality measures. Readmission rates are expected to be one of the quality measures. Inpatient areas are undertaking initiatives to decrease readmission rates in preparation for this change. The emphasis on avoiding readmission could cause an increase in emergency room revisit rates by psychiatric patients. In preparation for this potential impact, the mental health emergency service within the Emergency Department of a not-for-profit community based hospital implemented a proactive process improvement plan. The plan's goal was to insure that all patients' care was provided according to a defined standardize best practice process. Steps of the plan focused on (1) improving treatment providers' communications across the continuum of care, (2) enhancing communication between the mental health emergency department nurses and the on-call psychiatrists, (3) developing on-line decisional support to enhance communication, and (4) providing providers with feedback on the impact of changes. Implementation of the improvement process decreased the mean psychiatric emergency revisit rate from 5.7% to 4.3% and decreased the variability in monthly rates from a range of 1.83%-9.53% to a range of 3.53%-5.56%.