Clinical and cost effectiveness in replacing ACT with FACT

• Research type

  Research Study

• Full title

  Comparative analysis of the impact on the experience of care, outcomes, and cost between an assertive outreach service and its subsequent integration into standard CMHT care with FACT

• IRAS ID

  135837

• Contact name

  Mike Firn

• Contact email

  mike.firn@swlstg-tr.nhs.uk

• Sponsor organisation

  SW London & St George's Mental Health NHS Trust

• Research summary

  The tertiary assertive outreach (AO) service for Kingston will close in September 2013 for an integrated model, providing a timely opportunity for evaluation of impacts and experience. AO services have been mandated in England for the treatment of hard to engage patinets in the community with severe and persistant mental ilness.Many are now been closed due to a combination of limited local and national evidence for the primary benefit of reduced rehospitalisation, and a relaxation of the DH mandate. Three of the applicants (MF,DH, SW) have previously evaluated the 2010 closure of the Sutton and Merton AO services. The quantitative evaluation of the earlier closure is published in Social Psychiatry and Epidemiology 2012 as ‘a dismantling study of assertive outreach services: Comparing activity and outcomes following replacement with the FACT model’
  http://www.springerlink.com/openurl.asp?genre=article&id=doi:10 .1007/s00127-012-0602-x
  Integrating more intensive AO services into standard Community Mental Health Teams (CMHT) adopting a compensatory model of Flexible Assertive Community Treatment (FACT) proved to be clinically and economically superior

• REC name

  London - Fulham Research Ethics Committee

• REC reference

  13/LO/1408

• Date of REC Opinion

  1 Oct 2013

• REC opinion

  Further Information Favourable Opinion