Differentiating psychiatric readmissions from nonreadmissions.

This study tracked a cohort of 550 discharged state hospital patients through an entire publicly-funded mental health aftercare system. Data from hospital and community agency records indicate that neither social-demographic nor clinical characteristics successfully differentiated psychiatric readmissions from nonreadmissions. Use of aftercare services--in terms of the variety available and their relevance to discharged patients' assessed needs--had the greatest influence on predicting the likelihood of readmission.