Data were drawn from a large, multisite, 3-year, non-interventional study of patients with schizophrenia enrolled in the United States Schizophrenia Care and Assessment Program (US-SCAP), conducted between 1997 and 2003. Participants were treated in various mental health treatment systems, including Veterans Affairs (VA) hospitals, community mental health centers, community and state hospitals, and university health care service systems. Most patients in the study were covered by Medicare/Medicaid (81%), while those remaining were covered by the VA (6%), by private insurance (4%), or were uninsured (7%). Total costs over a 1-year period for mental health services and component costs (psychiatric hospitalizations, antipsychotic medications, other psychotropic medications, day treatment, emergency psychiatric services, psychosocial/rehabilitation group therapy, individual therapy, medication management, and case management) were calculated for 1557 patients with complete medical information. Patients were enrolled regardless of psychiatric or medical comorbidity, use of concomitant medications, or presence of behavioral problems.
Reference:
Zhu B, Ascher-Svanum H, Faries DE, Peng X, Salkever D, Slade EP. Costs of treating patients with schizophrenia who have illness-related crisis events. BMC Psychiatry. 2008; 8:72.