Sharing psychiatric care with primary care physicians: the Toronto Doctors Hospital experience (1991-1995).

<bold>Objectives: </bold>To investigate the shared mental health care experience of the psychiatry department of a small urban general hospital, which serves an ethnoculturally diverse population.<bold>Methods: </bold>A chart survey was undertaken of all patients referred by community physicians to a new shared care program between January 1991 and December 1995. Selected demographic and diagnostic characteristics were collected and analyzed.<bold>Results: </bold>Seven hundred and thirteen patients were assessed. They were principally female, ethnoculturally varied, and highly comorbid. The most striking association involved mood and substance-related disorders.<bold>Conclusion: </bold>The Doctors Hospital experience shows that the shared care approach can reach large numbers of patients through a multiplier effect. Additionally, this approach has the potential to enhance access for ethnoculturally varied and diagnostically complex groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]