Quality of Diabetes Care Among Adult Medicaid Enrollees With Mental Disorders.

OBJECTIVE: In light of the national trend toward integrating mental and general medical care, this study examined disparities in diabetes treatment among Medicaid recipients in a nonintegrated, managed care behavioral health carve-out system. METHODS: A retrospective study of Medicaid claims (July 2009-June 2010) compared quality of diabetes treatment among 21,015 patients with and without mental disorders. RESULTS: Presence of a mental disorder was associated with higher use of outpatient and primary care services for diabetes, lower rates of hospitalizations for diabetes, and higher odds of receiving three or more quality measures for diabetes care. Patients with serious mental illness had better diabetes care compared with patients with other mental disorders and patients with no mental disorders. CONCLUSIONS: Findings suggest that managed care behavioral health carve-out systems should be considered among the range of approaches for improving treatment for diabetes among persons with comorbid mental disorders, particularly serious mental disorders.

Length of inpatient stay of persons with serious mental illness: effects of hospital and regional characteristics.

OBJECTIVE: This study examined the extent to which hospital and regional characteristics are associated with length of hospitalization among patients with serious mental illness. METHODS: Data from the Pennsylvania Health Care Cost Containment Council and 2006 American Hospital Association data were obtained. The sample consisted of 106 hospitals from which 45,497 adults with serious mental illness were discharged in 2006. Guided by the extended version of Andersen's health care utilization model, hierarchical linear modeling, including patient case mix, hospital, and regional characteristics, was used to explain variations in hospitalization length. RESULTS: The average length of stay was 10.0 ± 3.0 days. Stays were longer at psychiatric hospitals than at general acute care facilities and at hospitals with a greater percentage of Medicare patients and patients with serious mental illness and a higher rate of readmission. In terms of regional characteristics, stays were also longer at hospitals in counties where the county mental health program received a larger percentage of the state's mental health budget and a smaller share of the budget was used for residential care. CONCLUSIONS: Hospital type and case mix, along with the presence of housing resources funded by county mental health programs, were found to be associated with variations in length of hospitalization. Further research of a longitudinal or prospective nature is required to determine whether the availability of housing programs for persons with mental disorders leads to shorter hospital stays for those in crisis and to determine whether longer stays are the result of differences in hospital practices.