The benefit of an ambulant psychiatric rehabilitation program in Vienna, Austria: an uncontrolled repeated measures study

Abstract

We investigated the benefit of a 6-week ambulant psychiatric rehabilitation program in an ambulant psychiatric rehabilitation clinic in Vienna, Austria, from January 2014 to December 2016 by an uncontrolled repeated measures study. The potential of this intervention program was assessed by effectiveness and cost measures using suitable statistical analyses. We compared the effectiveness and cost measures of this ambulant psychiatric rehabilitation program on patients for the period of up to 12 months after discharge to the period of 12 months before admission to the intervention program based on self-reported catamnesis questionnaires. For the program’s effectiveness measures, we accounted for both psychological indices for measuring depression severity, symptom burden, and functioning to document the health improvement of patients and economy-related indices such as the number of sick leave days for patients. For the program’s cost measures, both direct tangible treatment and medication costs and indirect tangible costs based on the productivity loss measured in non-working days of the patients were considered. The results significantly demonstrated that all psychological effectiveness measures for the patients highly improved by the 6-weeks rehabilitation program and remained rather stable 12 months after discharge. We found that costs for the 6-week ambulant psychiatric rehabilitation program could be easily covered within 12 months after discharge once a total societal cost perspective was considered. Even additional total cost savings of up to over 5000 Euro could be achieved which were highest for employed patients, followed by unemployed patients receiving rehabilitation allowance due to both their high direct medication and treatment costs as well as high indirect costs for productivity loss. The most important finding was that this treatment program was especially beneficial for rehabilitation patients in earlier stages of psychiatric diseases who were still employed, indicating the need for early intervention in mental disorder.

Psychotherapeutische Versorgung in Österreich: Kassenfinanzierte Psychotherapie für Menschen mit chronisch psychischen Erkrankungen im Jahresvergleich 2017 bis 2020

“…4000 € pro Jahr) stellen eine erhebliche finanzielle Belastung dar (Schosser et al. 2021 ). Die Studienergebnisse zeigen weiters, dass sich im Zusammenhang mit der Erhöhung des Kostenzuschusses der Anteil der Patient*innen mit chronisch psychischen Erkrankungen, die Psychotherapie in Anspruch nehmen, nicht verändert hat und die finanziellen Belastungen durch die privat finanzierten Kosten unverändert hoch sind.…”

Central European journal of operations research (CJOR) “operations research applied to health services (ORAHS) in Europe: general trends and ORAHS 2020 conference in Vienna, Austria”

“…In this special issue of CJOR, an health economic study entitled "The Benefit of an Ambulant Psychiatric Rehabilitation Program in Vienna, Austria: an Uncontrolled Repeated Measures Study" (Schosser et al 2021) is included which was briefly presented in the round table session on prevention. The authors compared the effectiveness and cost measures of a ambulant psychiatric rehabilitation program on patients for the period of up to 12 months after discharge to the period of 12 months before admission to the intervention program based on self-reported catamnesis questionnaires using suitable statistical analyses in Vienna, Austria.…”