Effect of psychiatric home care

By analysing routine data, we investigate the effect of psychiatric home care on the psychiatric hospitalisation of people with mental illness.

Factsheet

Schools involved School of Health Professions
Institute(s) Nursing
Research unit(s) Innovation in the Field of Mental Health and Psychiatric Care
Strategic thematic field Thematic field "Caring Society"
Funding organisation BFH
Duration (planned) 01.02.2024 - 28.02.2025
Head of project Dr. Anna Hegedüs
Project staff Dr. Anna Hegedüs
Prof. Dr. Dirk Richter
Keywords psychiatric nursing, Spitex, community mental health care, effect, HomeCareData

Situation

Psychiatric nursing plays an important role in the context of outpatient care for people with mental illnesses. In Switzerland, this is mainly provided by Spitex organisations, outpatient clinics and freelance psychiatric nurses. If psychiatric home care is prescribed by a doctor, the Spitex organizations carry out a needs assessment. This is usually done using the interRAI Community Mental Health tool launched by Spitex Schweiz in 2020. The analysis of routine data, such as that from the interRAI-CMH needs assessment tool and psychiatric hospitalisations, which are recorded in the medical statistics of hospitals, allows the effectiveness of interventions, such as Spitex support for people with mental illness, to be examined cost-effectively. The potential of such analyses has not yet been fully exploited. The aim of this research project is to investigate the effect of psychiatric Spitex support on psychiatric hospitalisations of people with mental illness. The following research questions will be answered: (a) What effect does admission to psychiatric home care have on the psychiatric hospitalisation of people with mental illness? b) Which personal characteristics are associated with an increased risk of psychiatric hospitalisation?

Course of action

The project is a mirror image study in which previously collected, anonymised routine data from the interRAI-CMH needs assessment tool from HomeCareData is linked with data from the hospitals' medical statistics and analysed using a mirror image method. The analysis compares the events (hospital admission) for each person with identical person-time before and after admission to Spitex care.