Multidisciplinary assessment

Abstract

At times, patients were referred to our specialized inpatient psychiatric unit, but beds were not available. Having identified many of the psychiatric inpatients with treatable medical problems contributing to emotional and behavioral distress, we wondered if an outpatient examination similar to the usual inpatient one, could help some people avoid hospitalization. In response to this, a specialized, multidisciplinary evaluation clinic for people with Intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) and mental health disorders was created. The evaluation team subsequently saw over 300 people with IDD and ASD over a period of 5 years. Our unpublished data regarding assessment of wait-listed patients using the comprehensive multidisciplinary evaluations resulted in a 50 % diversion rate. In many of these cases, detection of medical problems that had been missed or increased attention to existing health problems, resulted in decreased behavioral symptoms, and the admissions were likely avoided because of this.