Impact of illness management and recovery programs on hospital and emergency room use by Medicaid enrollees.

OBJECTIVE: Illness management and recovery is a structured program that helps consumers with severe mental illness learn effective ways to manage illness and pursue recovery goals. This study examined the impact of the program on health service utilization.
METHODS: This was a retrospective cohort study of five assertive community treatment (ACT) teams in Indiana that implemented illness management and recovery. With Medicaid claims data from July 1, 2003, to June 30, 2008, panel data were created with person-months as the level of analysis, resulting in 14,261 observations for a total of 498 unique individuals. Zero-inflated negative binomial regression models were used to predict hospitalization days and emergency room visits, including covariates of demographic characteristics, employment status, psychiatric diagnosis, and concurrent substance use disorder. The main predictor variables of interest were receipt of illness management and recovery services, dropout from the program, and program graduation status.
RESULTS: Consumers who received some illness management and recovery services had fewer hospitalization days than those receiving only ACT. Graduates had fewer emergency room visits than did ACT-only consumers.
CONCLUSIONS: This is the first study to examine the impact of illness management and recovery on service utilization. Controlling for a number of background variables, the study showed that illness management and recovery programs were associated with reduced inpatient hospitalization and emergency room use over and above ACT.