A PRELIMINARY EVALUATION OF TREATMENT OUTCOMES AT A VETERANS HOSPITALS INPATIENT PSYCHIATRY UNIT

This article describes a preliminary effort to evaluate inpatient psyc hiatric services at the Carl Vinson DVA Medical Center in Dublin, Geor gia. The facility annually treats a large number of veterans for a var iety of psychiatric disorders. To determine whether these Veterans imp roved following care. a simple pretest-posttest group design was emplo yed, using the SCL-90-R, to assess psychiatric symptomatology before a nd after inpatient treatment. Both statistically significant and pract ically meaningful improvements in symptomatology were evident at disch arge. While the research design does not permit causal inferences, low -cost evaluations such as this one simply demonstrating that patients get better are important first steps in empirically determining the ef ficacy of inpatient psychiatric services, and represent one means of d emonstrating accountable practice. (C) 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.