Sharing psychiatric care with primary care physicians: the Toronto Doctors Hospital experience (1991-1995).

OBJECTIVES

To investigate the shared mental health care experience of the psychiatry department of a small urban general hospital, which serves an ethnoculturally diverse population.

METHODS

A chart survey was undertaken of all patients referred by community physicians to a new shared care program between January 1991 and December 1995. Selected demographic and diagnostic characteristics were collected and analyzed.

RESULTS

Seven hundred and thirteen patients were assessed. They were principally female, ethnoculturally varied, and highly comorbid. The most striking association involved mood and substance-related disorders.

CONCLUSION

The Doctors Hospital experience shows that the shared care approach can reach large numbers of patients through a multiplier effect. Additionally, this approach has the potential to enhance access for ethnoculturally varied and diagnostically complex groups.