Impacts Associated with the Medicare Psychiatric Prospective Payment System

To understand how the flow of patients between the inpatient and outpatient modalities has changed as a result of changes to a prospective payment system, as well as to understand changes in the delivery of mental health care in the last decade, this project seeks information in the following specific areas: - the role played by smaller psychiatric inpatient units and facilities, - the use of partial hospitalization and outpatient programs in complementing and substituting for inpatient care, and - the use of two prospective payment systems to pay for essentially the same inpatient services.