1. Shared Reflection to Maximize Resources and Minimize Costs: The Reflecting Team Applied to a Hospital Environment.
- Author
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Balcells-Oliveró, M. M., Nuño, L., Freixa, N., Domínguez, I., Pons, I., Alcover, E., and Gual, T.
- Subjects
HEALTH facilities ,MEDICAL care costs ,RETROSPECTIVE studies ,PATIENTS ,HOSPITAL admission & discharge ,COST effectiveness ,PUBLIC hospitals ,REFLECTION (Philosophy) ,PSYCHIATRIC hospitals - Abstract
Severe mental illness entails multiple hospital admissions and a large use of public resources. The Reflecting Team (RT), together with other dialogue strategies, place in a single therapeutic space, the patient, his family and a team of professionals to find together a solution to a situation of stagnation. The aim of this study was to evaluate feasibility and cost-effectiveness of a RT intervention in psychiatric inpatients in a public hospital. Six RT were performed, and clinical variables were collected retrospectively for six months pre-RT and post-RT. Both number of hospital admissions and total time spent in the psychiatric acute unit show a significant decrease. All computed cost showed statistically significant reduction. The results suggest RT might be a good strategy to introduce a positive change in the treatment of those psychiatric cases in which the patient and family find themselves caught in a system that seems to offer stale and ineffective help to problems that have become chronic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2021
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