Health Insurance Prepayment for Psychotherapy in Private Psychiatric Practice

Abstract

1. Routine data, available in a prepaid medical insurance plan, may be used to describe the amount and pattern of psychiatric services utilized. 2. Married females were twice as likely as married males to be seen by a psychiatrist. 3. 14% of referrals did not receive subsequent psychotherapy. 4. Psychotherapy is terminable; “new” patients receiving psychotherapy had a median number of seven interviews. 5. There is considerable variation in the patterns of practice of psychotherapy by individual psychiatrists. 6. 377% of employed patients had changed jobs or were unemployed within two years of referral to a psychiatrist. 7. Further case and population studies are recommended. “Within the past fifty years, history has shown us the transition of medical services from a preventive service to one more specifically related to treatment of diseases in individual patients. I have suggested that we are now entering a phase in which psychiatry and its ramifications will play a major role …” “… The problem of providing and paying for these services is a different problem from that which we have faced in the past and calls for the cooperation of the profession, voluntary insurance and Government. “I believe that to meet this problem our voluntary programmes must be more willing to experiment.” (26)