Michael Parsonage & Matt Fossey
Economic Evaluation of a Liaison Psychiatry Service examines the costs and benefits of an award-winning service based at Birmingham City Hospital. The service, known as RAID, offers comprehensive, round-the-clock mental health support to all adult patients in the hospital.
The report finds that the financial savings RAID generates within the hospital significantly outweigh the costs of running the service. Since expanding from a small liaison psychiatry team to its current form in 2009, RAID is estimated to have cut the costs of bed use within the hospital by some £3.5 million a year.
Liaison psychiatry can therefore represent good value for public money. It both cuts costs in the NHS and improves people’s quality of life. By even the most conservative analysis, the RAID service creates savings that are four times bigger than the extra cost of expanding the service it replaced.
Audience: Commissioners, health services, hospitals.
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