BACKGROUND Comorbid chronic illnesses, such as cardiovascular disease, respiratory conditions, and type 2 diabetes are common among people with serious mental illness. Management of comorbid illness in the mental health setting is sometimes ad hoc and poorly delivered. Use of a cardiometabolic health nurse (CHN) is proposed as one strategy to improve the delivery of physical health care to this...

The use of telecommunications--telephone, computer, videoconferencing equipment--to provide mental health services at a distance has grown rapidly. This review encompasses reports from programs that provide telepsychiatry services, including telephone- and computer- based education and support services, telephone screening for dementia, and the use of videoconferencing to provide psychiatric co...

Objective: The purpose of this study was to examine the impact of residential, integrated treatment for co-occurring substance use and mental health disorders on healthcare utilization and costs. More specifically, we compared preand post-treatment utilization of emergency room (ER) services and hospital stays for medical, mental health, and substance use problems. Methods: Data from 1,394 pati...

PURPOSE Describe patterns of health care utilization among vulnerable subgroups of an underserved population and identify populations that could benefit from interventions to reduce health care costs and improve quality of care. METHODS Health Information Exchange data focused on underserved patients was used to estimate the risk of an emergency department (ED) or inpatient (IP) visit among v...

Background A number of developing countries have contracted out public health facilities to the Non-Government Organizations (NGOs) in order to improve service utilization. However, there is a paucity of in-depth qualitative information on barriers to access services as a result of contracting from service users’ perspective. The objective of this study was to explore perceived barriers to util...

BACKGROUND The aim of the study was to assess levels of somatic and mental health distress, well-being, AS WELL AS utilization of primary and specialist health care services among war-related widowed and non-widowed female civilian survivors of war. METHODS 100 war-related widowed lone mothers and 106 non-widowed mothers who had experienced the Kosovo war ten years previously participated in ...

s d Mental health is essential for normal adolescent develpment. When adolescents’ mental health is compromised, dolescents, their families, their communities, and society ll bear a heavy burden. Mental health services are essential or adolescents having problems in this area. However, roblems related to financing continue to limit many adoescents’ access to mental health services in the United...

BACKGROUND Smoking is one of the major modifiable risk factors contributing to early mortality for people with serious mental illness. However, only a minority of service users access smoking cessation interventions and there are concerns about the appropriateness of generic stop-smoking services for this group. The SCIMITAR (Smoking Cessation Intervention for Severe Mental Ill-Health Trial) fe...

This article has two objectives: to quantify the access and utilization of services received by chronically mentally ill Medicaid recipients, and to compare service utilization and access under prepayment and fee-for-service (FFS) payment. The study setting is Hennepin County (Minneapolis), Minnesota, where 35 percent of Medicaid recipients were randomly assigned to receive services from prepai...