The Impact of a Community Hospital's Psychiatric Unit on a Regional State Hospital

A community hospital serving part of a state hospital's receiving area opened a psychiatric inpatient unit. The authors studied the impact of the new unit on the number of psychiatric admissions to the state hospital, and also sought to determine if the two facilities provided duplicate services to the area. In comparing admission rates to the state hospital before and after the opening of the community unit, they found the unit did not have a significant impact. In comparing sample groups of patients at the two hospitals, they found that each served a different socioeconomic group and therefore did not offer duplicate services.