RISK OF HOSPITALIZATION - DEVELOPMENT, RELIABILITY TESTING, AND VALIDATION OF A NEW SCALE

Case management programs for the seriously mentally ill emerged nationally to secure longer community tenure in the "least restrictive" setting. Among the problems facing these programs were scarce staff resources and a paucity of reliable and valid means for allocating staff effort to best safeguard the community tenure of clients. This paper describes the development and psychometric assessment of a Risk of Hospitalization (ROH) scale. The scale was designed to help case managers prioritize and tailor services to identified clients based upon need. Need was conceptualized as the extent of an individual client's risk of immediate hospitalization. Using data provided by staff in New Jersey's Clinical Case Management programs, the scale was demonstrated to have satisfactory reliability and validity.