Psychiatric health care research - An instrument for planning health care needs

The planning of health care is primarily an administrative task. Service re search supports the health administration in this taste by supplying empiri cal data to objectify the need for care and ways to cater for that need. In this, service research on the one hand draws on descriptive and analytical data of epidemiological studies. On the other hand, indices of social stru cture provide information about factors influencing the utilisation of heal th services. Apart from this, different types of service utilisation data a re used for the analysis of needs. None of the methods mentioned is suffici ent on its own. Only the integration of the different levels of analysis al lows sufficiently competent statements on health care needs.