By establishing programs to help people recover emotionally after unexpected negative events, hospitals can achieve gains in patient satisfaction and in staff retention.
The program also connects patients to other community resources and addresses health, social, and logistical barriers to care. The program significantly enhanced access to appropriate care and improved client understanding of their medical condition, resulting in enhanced health functioning and a significant decline in emergency department use and costs for nonemergent conditions.
The policies include mandatory screening for both disorders using validated tools, a learning collaborative and evaluations to promote quality improvement, and financial incentives to clinics achieving various service benchmarks. The department also offers training to help providers with various issues related to these policies.
Offered at no cost to participants, the program has enhanced access to treatment, employment, and job training; reduced suicide and self-harm attempts, hospitalizations, emergency department visits, incarcerations, and homelessness; and significantly lowered health care and other mental illness-related costs.
In a year-long pilot test with 65 residents, the program reduced hospital admissions and readmissions, had no bounce backs to nursing homes, decreased falls, improved nutritional status, and increased levels of physical activity.
The program significantly reduced overall readmission rates at participating hospitals. Patients involved in specific quality improvement initiatives that came out of the program also experienced significantly fewer readmissions, along with associated declines in inpatient days and costs.