Impact of Sudden Expansion of Catchment Area on Admissions to a Psychiatric Intensive Care Unit

The closure of a neighboring psychiatric intensive care unit (PICU) provided an opportunity to evaluate the number of PICU beds required per head of population and to explore how referrals to the PICU are prioritized.

Data were collected and analyzed for admissions to our PICU in the year before and the year after the closure of the other unit.

Admissions increased (in year 2) by 42%, although there was no significant increase in the use of restrictive nursing interventions. There was, however, a shift in patients' characteristics, which differed between males and females.

The closure of the other PICU was uneventful, suggesting that the new arrangement of one bed per 100,000 population is potentially safe and feasible. Furthermore, we demonstrated that the threshold for referring patients to the PICU was adjusted, and the length of stay on the PICU was reduced (in males only) in order to adapt to the reduction in the number of PICU beds.