Adopting New Models for Continuity of Care: The Ward as Mini-Mental-Health-Center

Several years ago the staff of a traditional psychiatric ward in a Veterans Administration hospital began trying to provide continual care for their former inpatients after they left the hospital. Nursing assistants conducted basic-skills groups and other groups in board-and-care homes; staff members made themselves available to former inpatients and their families, room-mates, or board-and-care sponsors through a 24-hour telephone service and home visits; and a day-care program and follow-up groups for the ward's outpatients were set up. Later the staff established additional day-care and follow-up programs in a down-town satellite unit. In a recent three-month period, patients made a total of 4488 visits to the satellite and hospital programs. The preceding paper discusses some of the theoretical considerations on which this program and other alternatives to traditional care are based.