An open-systems approach to the study of mental hospitals in transition.

In evaluating the functioning of a state mental hospital going through the transition of becoming a community mental health center, it is important to focus not only on the intraorganizational processes of the changing hospital but also on the exchanges and transactions between the hospital and the environment and the processes and structures through which parts of the environment are related to one another. This paper presents a framework for the study of the changing hospital organizational system and its relations to the community, based on the concepts of opensystems theory.