RESEARCH ARTICLE
Flexible Assertive Community Treatment, Severity of Symptoms and Psychiatric Health Service Use, a Real life Observational Study
Marjan Drukker1, †, *, Ellen Visser†, 2, Sjoerd Sytema2, Jim van Os1, 3
Article Information
Identifiers and Pagination:
Year: 2013Volume: 9
First Page: 202
Last Page: 209
Publisher ID: CPEMH-9-202
DOI: 10.2174/1745017901309010202
Article History:
Received Date: 15/5/2013Revision Received Date: 12/9/2013
Acceptance Date: 16/9/2013
Electronic publication date: 28/11/2013
Collection year: 2013

open-access license: This is an open access article licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/) which permits unrestricted, non-commercial use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the work is properly cited.
Abstract
Background:
Introduction of Flexible Assertive Community Treatment (FACT) may be associated with increased remission rates and changes in patterns of care. The present paper reports on differences in psychosocial functioning and health care use between patients in FACT and two groups of patients not currently provided with a specific model of community service.
Methods:
The ongoing "Pharmacotherapy Monitoring and Outcome Survey" provided routine outcome measures of patients using antipsychotics in the north of the Netherlands. Level of psychosocial functioning was assessed using the Health of the Nations Outcome Scales (HoNOS) and matched with psychiatric health care consumption obtained from the Psychiatric Case Register. Patients who never received FACT, patients ever in FACT but not at assessment date, and patients in FACT were identified. Data were subjected to multilevel linear regression analysis.
Results:
Data showed that most patients in FACT also had non-FACT episodes after the start of FACT. Furthermore, patients in FACT displayed higher levels of psychosocial functioning and used more outpatient care than the other two groups.
Conclusions:
Patients in FACT receive more outpatient care and have better psychosocial functioning. However, causal inferences cannot be derived from these data. In addition, membership of a FACT-team in this setting did not last indefinitely.