The influence of diagnosis and functioning on health service use

  • Research type

    Research Study

  • Full title

    The influence of diagnosis and functioning on health service utilisation in tertiary specialist mood disorder service out-patients: A cohort study.

  • IRAS ID

    165386

  • Contact name

    David Baldwin

  • Contact email

    D.S.Baldwin@soton.ac.uk

  • Sponsor organisation

    University of Southampton

  • Duration of Study in the UK

    1 years, 5 months, 2 days

  • Research summary

    Background

    In recent years, there have been ongoing efforts by the National Health Service (NHS) in England to develop a payment system for its mental health services. A subject of much debate in this development surrounds how to define ‘mental health clusters’ which are used for resource allocation purposes. This debate has mainly centred on whether to define mental health clusters by diagnostic information or by information about functioning ability in daily life.

    Objective

    To determine the extent to which both diagnostic and functioning information are associated with health service utilisation (HSU) by patients attending a tertiary referral mood disorders service outpatient clinic (a convenience sample).

    Study design

    A cohort study, with a 9 month assessment period (3 months retrospective [i.e before baseline] and 6 months prospective).

    Participants & procedure

    We plan to recruit at least 108 patients attending a tertiary referral mood disorders service outpatient clinic (a convenience sample). Participants will be asked to: (1) provide questionnaire data (see details below) in a 25 minute data collection meeting; (2) consent their patient records to be accessed by the lead researcher and (3) agree to provide questionnaire data by telephone at two follow up points- 3 months and 6 months.

    Instruments

    • The Hospital Anxiety & Depression Scale - a self-report questionnaire for assessing anxiety and depressive symptoms.
    • Clinical Global Impression Scale – a self-report questionnaire for assessing overall severity of mental ill health.
    • PARADISE-24 – a self-report questionnaire for assessing functioning.
    • The Self-Administered Comorbidity Questionnaire- a self-report questionnaire for assessing the impact of comorbidity.
    • Client Service Receipt Inventory – a researcher questionnaire for assessing health service utilisation.
    • Hampshire Health Record (patient records)- for assessing health service utilisation.

  • REC name

    London - Queen Square Research Ethics Committee

  • REC reference

    14/LO/1900

  • Date of REC Opinion

    21 Oct 2014

  • REC opinion

    Further Information Favourable Opinion