Team use of the Global Assessment Scale for inpatient planning and evaluation

A cost-effective team adaptation of the Global Assessment Scale (GAS) is used on the admitting ward of a state hospital. At admission staff meetings and at weekly progress review meetings, each member of the multidisciplinary team independently provides a GAS rating for each patient. The mean of each set of ratings becomes the patient's current team GAS score. The scores for individual patients, the changes in the scores over time, and the average scores for the ward offer a method for objectively expressing the patients' levels of functioning. Reliability and validity data supporting the method are reported. The team GAS format serves planning, evaluation, and research functions for individual patients and for the ward as a whole.