Quality management in psychiatry

Over the past 50 years, treatment possibilities in psychiatry have drastica lly improved, but the results we actually achieve under everyday treatment conditions fall far short of what could be accomplished. Quality management represents a suitable method of reducing this gap. Although it has been su ccessfully practiced in other medical disciplines for a long time, its impl ementation in psychiatry has previously been restricted to pilot projects, Quality management programs in psychiatry have been slow to be accepted bec ause, up to now, only a few mental health professionals have received train ing in quality management techniques, In order to compensate for this infor mation deficit and to familiarize psychiatrists and other mental health car e workers with this increasingly important topic, we will provide in this p aper a brief survey of the most important principles and techniques of qual ity management, This information should encourage psychiatrists to apply th is new method to their own areas of responsibility, The results of one of o ur own studies on schizophrenic outpatients, which are presented at the end of the paper, are intended to show that the outcome can be improved and co sts reduced by implementing quality management programs in psychiatry. Int Clin Psychopharmacol 16 (suppl 3):S15-S24 (C) 2001 Lippincott Williams & Wi lkins.