Is Everything in the Garden Rosy? An Integrated Care Pathway for Acute Inpatient Mental Health Care, from Development to Evaluation: Part 2

This is the second paper of two, which considers the development, use and evaluation of an integrated care pathway (ICP) for acute inpatient mental health care. This paper reports an evaluation that was carried out to measure the impact of an ICP (described in Part 1) on the interventions it was designed to guide. The methodology used was pre- and post-ICP comparison of activities/care recorded in health-care records using delineating measures. Data were gathered from the notes of 23 service-users who had two inpatient stays within a year, one pre-ICP and one post-ICP. The findings suggested an overall improved provision of interventions, although as the ICP progressed the likelihood of receiving interventions fell. Three specific aspects were not affected by the ICP, these were giving information about observation levels to service-users, care planning and medical interventions. These issues are discussed and the conclusion raise implications for further ICP development and implementation.