Mobile Crisis Program: Effectiveness, Efficiency and Consumer Essay

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Mobile Crisis Program:

Effectiveness, Efficiency and Consumer Satisfaction, Questions

What are the goals of the Mobile Crisis Program?

The mobile crisis program of DeKalb County, Georgia is a component of the DeKalb Community Service Board, a comprehensive mental health service agency aimed at treating and reducing the threat of lash-outs from mentally ill persons throughout the county. The goals of the program are to provide community-based psychiatric services to stabilize persons experiencing psychiatric emergencies in the least restrictive environment, to decrease arrests of mentally ill people in crisis, and to reduce police officers' time handling psychiatric emergency situations throughout the county, thus freeing them to return to their regular duty serving and protecting their respective communities.

In allowing for this type of program within its communities, DeKalb county's overarching goal of achieving stability within its borders has the ability to come to fruition. Additionally, as the mobile crisis program's goal of intervening in possibly violent and distracting acts amongst its mentally ill citizens, the county will cut costs in terms of police and hospital involvement, as a rotating team of four police officers and two nurses are always on hand to intercede in such events, forwarding the success goal of the mobile crisis program.

2. What is the study sample?

The study's design employed the concept of a natural experiment in order to eliminate selection bias. As such, the study sample consisted of 73 psychiatric emergency cases handled by the mobile crisis team and 58 such cases handled by regular police procedures throughout a three-month period from October 1, 1995 to December 31, 1995. In order to keep the sample as random as possible, information was obtained from records of the public safety department and the mobile crisis program on subjects' demographic characteristics such as age, race and gender, the homelessness status, whether the subject had a state psychiatric hospital admission in the previous six months, whether the crisis situation involved violence, the duration of police involvement, and the disposition for the crisis situation.

Stuck Writing Your "Mobile Crisis Program: Effectiveness, Efficiency and Consumer" Essay?

For the purposes of this experiment, "homelessness" was defined as having no permanent residence and currently living on the street or in a homeless shelter.

3. The program measurements focused on effectiveness, efficiency and consumer and police satisfaction. How was effectiveness measured? Efficiency? Consumer and police satisfaction?

Program effectiveness was evaluated by measuring the differences between the hospitalization and arrest rates of the study groups. Evaluation found that 55% of cases handled by the mobile crisis team were concluded without any psychiatric hospitalization.

Efficiency, in terms of psychiatric emergencies, has a standard end or common objective, of both mobile crisis programs and regular police services to resolve or ameliorate the situation for the immediate protection of the health and safety of the persons involved and to facilitate access to any additional treatment or follow-up services needed. To achieve this goal, efficiency was evaluated by comparing the cost per case/episode for….....

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"Mobile Crisis Program Effectiveness Efficiency And Consumer" (2012, September 28) Retrieved May 16, 2024, from
https://www.aceyourpaper.com/essays/mobile-crisis-program-effectiveness-efficiency-82330

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"Mobile Crisis Program Effectiveness Efficiency And Consumer" 28 September 2012. Web.16 May. 2024. <
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Latest Chicago Format (16th edition)

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"Mobile Crisis Program Effectiveness Efficiency And Consumer", 28 September 2012, Accessed.16 May. 2024,
https://www.aceyourpaper.com/essays/mobile-crisis-program-effectiveness-efficiency-82330