A high-risk screen for psychiatric discharge planning.

This article tests the hypothesis that psychiatric inpatients at high risk for presenting difficulties in aftercare planning can be accurately identified on admission to an inpatient unit. A 16-item high-risk screening list is presented that was developed through an earlier analysis of discharge-delayed cases in a psychiatric hospital. The capacity of the list to accurately predict high-risk status was tested by comparing admission and discharge high-risk scores for 448 patients with a range of psychiatric disorders. Sixty-six percent of the patients rated high risk at admission were identically rated at discharge. Differences among risk groups were also found with respect to key demographic variables. The high-risk screen permits early identification of patients who will require immediate and intensive environmental interventions. Such data are critical to psychiatric social work in preventing overstays and in deploying department resources with maximum effectiveness.