Do Home-Based Psychiatric Services for Patients in Medico-Social Institutions Reduce Hospitalizations? Pre-Post Evaluation of a French Psychiatric Mobile Team.

World Health Organization recommends the implementation of alternatives to full-time hospitalizations. Psychiatric home-care has known a worldwide development in the last 20 years. The psychiatric mobile team for social and medico-social institutions in Saint-Etienne, France, (Equipe mobile d'intervention en établissements Sociaux et Médico-sociaux, ESMS) aims to support professionals from medico-social housing institutions (MSHI) in order to maintain people in housing. The objective of the study was to evaluate the efficiency of home-based interventions to reduce hospitalizations and improve collaboration between psychiatric hospital facilities and MSHI. We used a pre-post study design. A same cohort of patients living in a MSHI one year before intervention and one year after implementation of the ESMS was studied. Hospitalizations were compared between the two periods. A survey was conducted for qualitative evaluation among professionals in MHSI. Sixty-three patients were included. Most patients suffered from psychotic disorders (71%). We found a significant decrease in the mean number of admissions per year from 2,06 to 1,48 (Wilcoxon signed rank test; df64; p = 0,01). Mobile-team interventions included answering phone calls, home visits, coordination meetings, or clinical interviews with patients in inpatient and outpatient services, with an average of 9,3 interventions per patient (SD = 11,4). ESMS was evaluated as "essential" for 73% of 11 professionals from MSHI who answered the questionnaire in May 2017. Assertive Community Treatment and Crisis Resolution Teams are the most studied home-care models in psychiatry. Our results tend to show the efficiency of mobile-team interventions in MSHI, to enhance partnerships.