Measuring inpatient psychosocial severity: a progress report on the development of an instrument

The changes in payment for hospital care underscore social workers' efforts to account more effectively for services, productivity and costs. This paper reports on the development of a multidimensional scale designed to augment social work accounting methods by measuring the severity of inpatients' psychosocial problems. A description of the scale, the process of its development, examples of severity levels and rating methods are included, as are reliability and validity considerations. The functions of the Psychosocial Severity Index are described including its purpose, its unique organization of patient information, its promotion of more effective medical record documentation and its potentials for use.