The role of advanced technology in inpatient child psychiatry: leading edge or useful aid?
New technology has played a catalytic role in advancing understanding of etiology, diagnosis, and treatment in virtually all fields of medicine. Child psychiatry, a relatively new medical specialty, has begun to employ such advanced technology in diagnosis and treatment monitoring. This current study demonstrates that, in an inpatient child psychiatric setting, such advanced technology has a positive diagnostic yield of 5% for new medical diagnoses and a cost of about 0.5% of the hospital bed cost. Other tests, such as psychotropic blood level monitoring and psychometric evaluation of cognitive functioning, have a much higher yield.
Woolston
J L
JL
Children's Psychiatric Inpatient Service, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, CT 06510.
Riddle
M A
MA
D000293:Adolescent; D000342:Affective Symptoms / Q000175:diagnosis*; D002648:Child; D002653:Child Behavior Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis*; D002675:Child, Preschool; D002869:Chromosome Aberrations / Q000175:diagnosis*; D025063:Chromosome Disorders; D003365:Costs and Cost Analysis; D006801:Humans; D013677:Medical Laboratory Science / Q000191:economics*; D019965:Neurocognitive Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis*