United Press International
Originally published April 24, 2013
U.S. psychiatrists spend an average 38 minutes telephoning an insurance company getting authorization to admit a patient to the hospital, researchers say.
Lead author Dr. Amy Funkenstein, a child psychiatry fellow at Brown University in Providence, R.I., led the study while she was a psychiatric resident at Cambridge Health Alliance and Harvard Medical School in Boston.
Over a three-month period, the researchers tabulated how long psychiatric patients who were deemed in need of inpatient admission stayed in the emergency department prior to being hospitalized, and the amount of time the ED psychiatrists spent obtaining authorization from the patient's insurer.
Most psychiatric patients required hospitalization because they were suicidal or, in a few cases, homicidal, Funkenstein said.
The entire story is here.
