Community Treatment Teams: an alternative to state hospital

This article describes the implementation of Community Treatment Teams as a strategy to provide services to patients discharged from a state psychiatric hospital. The closing of Philadelphia State Hospital was the impetus for the development of an alternative long term care treatment system for the seriously mentally ill which was based on a variation of the community treatment team model. This article provides a description of the teams, their functioning, structure, and the impact they have had on the service system.