Service components of case management which reduce inpatient care use for persons with serious mental illness

This is a study of two types of case management: case management (CIM) whic h provided the service coordination functions, and Intensive Case Managemen t (ICM) which consisted of both the coordination function and the provision of direct support to the client. Using secondary data on public clients, c haracteristics of mental health service use were analyzed for 80 ICM and 84 CM clients. The ICM clients had significantly fewer episodes per patient a nd less inpatient days per year than the CM clients. These findings suggest that direct support services make a significant difference in reducing ann ual hospital care.