Psychiatric Bulletin (2007) 31: 467. doi: 10.1192/pb.31.12.467a
© 2007 The Royal College of Psychiatrists
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Correspondence

Benchmarking a liaison psychiatry service

Jim Bolton

Consultant Liaison Psychiatrist and Honorary Senior Lecturer, Department of Liaison Psychiatry, St Helier Hospital, Wrythe Lane, Carshalton, Surrey SM5 1AA

Nicolette Kaneza

Foundation Doctor, St Helier Hospital

O’Keeffe et al (2007) highlight the lack of standards for evaluating liaison psychiatry services. They describe how timeliness of response is one possible quality indicator.

Our liaison psychiatry service serves a 600-bed general hospital in south London. Over a 3-month period in 2007 we audited our response times to 124 consecutive referrals against pre-existing standards.

We routinely categorise referrals according to the urgency of response required into one of the following three groups: emergency (including A&E) to be assessed within 1 hour; urgent, to be assessed within the same working day; routine, to be assessed within 2 working days.

For the three categories we achieved the response time standards for all referrals. The proportion of referrals in each group and the mean response times were as follows: emergency, 25%, 21 min (s.d.=20); urgent, 30%, 70 min (s.d.=86); routine, 45%, 200 min (s.d.=183).

A major advantage of an on-site liaison psychiatry service is the speed of response compared with psychiatric provision by community services (Royal College of Physicians & Royal College of Psychiatrists, 2003). it is difficult and expensive to conduct studies that might demonstrate the cost-effectiveness of a liaison psychiatry service in terms of reduced lengths of stay for general hospital in-patients and A&E patients. However, response time is a proxy measure. We hope that our data and the benchmarking recommendations by O’Keeffe et al will emphasise the importance of a high-quality liaison psychiatry service to healthcare commissioners.

References

  1. O’KEEFFE, N., RAMAIAH, U. S., NOMANI, E., et al (2007) Benchmarking a liaison psychiatry service: a prospective 6-month study of quality indicators. Psychiatric Bulletin, 31, 345 –347.[Abstract/Free Full Text]
  2. ROYAL COLLEGE OF PHYSICIANS & ROYAL COLLEGE OF PSYCHIATRISTS (2003) The Psychological Care of Medical Patients: A Practical Guide (2nd edn). (Council Report CR108). Royal College of Physicians of London & Royal College of Psychiatrists.




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