Transition from in-person to psychiatry’s virtual format during the COVID-19 pandemic thrust upon the healthcare community. The experience has demonstrated the capability of healthcare services to be creative and resilient. Once considered limited out of necessity in remote locations has become the dominant form of outpatient psychiatric treatment. One facility readily adapted to the development of a virtual psychiatric partial hospitalization by patients and clinical staff. Clinical staffs’ creation of protocols for evaluation with the inpatient clinical team to determine patient appropriateness for virtual PHP became routine (Hom et al., 2020). Based on a basic assessment of the patients’ capability to use a smartphone or iPad, focusing and engaging mentally and emotionally came first. Confirmation that the patient had established an outpatient therapist and psychiatric clinician was necessary for the patients’ emergency needs during off-hours (2020). Patients accepted into the PHP were given an orientation while still inpatient to accessing the virtual environment in addition to a packet of written material with a schedule (2020) Assignment: Analysis of a Pertinent Healthcare Issue.
Gathering treatment outcome data and patients’ evaluations to determine the effectiveness of this essential modality of treatment will further inform of overall strengths and feasibility to continue virtual PHP, IOP, and outpatient treatment post-COVID-10 pandemic (2020). These activities will serve well to inform leadership and the payor sources of the same. Again, the need to expand virtual psychiatry is at hand to accommodate those patients in need who may otherwise fall through the cracks when discharged without a follow-up plan.
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