Quantitative care norms for a psychiatric ambulatory population in a county medical assistance program.

An approach for developing quantitative care norms for outpatient acute psychiatric patients is presented. Both the methodological concept of the norming procedure and its application to the needs of Medicaid in Rockland County, New York are given. The methodology is totally general in that it could be applied to concerns related to characterization of services rendered in a wide variety of applications ranging from planning to utilization review. The norms developed relate both to monthly quantity of services rendered and length of active treatment period. Further, the impact of a review rule is discussed in terms of its implication to number of cases reviewed.