The Hospital Clínic’s Hospital at Home (HaH) Unit for child and adolescent psychiatry is celebrating 5 years since its creation. From the very outset, it has formed part of the HaH Unit, in coordination with the hospital’s Institute of Neurosciences, and it aims to provide diagnostic and therapeutic care similar to that of a conventional hospital ward. Its creation makes it possible to give tertiary-level care to patients in a situation of clinical instability or in need of intensive treatment because of a mental illness, thereby expanding the services offered by the Cross-cutting Hospital at Home Unit and providing this alternative, which was already available for other medical and surgical pathologies.
A total of 431 adult patients have been treated since 2019, and 175 minors since 2021, with an average stay of 21 days in the unit. It is a specialized team, although its activity does not focus on any specific type of mental illness. Thus, the team is outstanding due to its great capacity for adapting to the patient, who they work alongside, as well as to their environment, in order to offer personalized care. The unit has demonstrated its clinical objective and quality of care, with more than 90% of patients being discharged to continue their usual outpatient treatment.
The patients access the unit either via the hospital’s Psychiatry Emergency Department or from the different acute psychiatric hospitalization wards in the area. They may also be referred on a scheduled basis by community care teams, such as mental health centres or psychiatric day hospitals. The treatment is individualized in order to meet the needs of each patient, with an agreed therapeutic objective, which is achieved through daily visits by the care team 7 days a week.
At present, at the HaH Unit there are four nursing professionals specializing in mental health and two psychiatrists, who treat 11 patients simultaneously within the Hospital Clínic’s area of influence. Therefore, the HaH Unit has proven to be a real alternative to conventional hospitalization. It currently has 82 (virtual) beds and is the largest Hospital at Home Service in Catalonia.
