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RESEARCH WEEKLY: Do Bed Registries Improve Access to Care for People with Serious
Mental Illness?

Psychiatric bed registries have promise when it comes to increasing access to treatment
for people with serious mental illness, however much more needs to be done to make
them more efficient and useful, according to new research.
Due to the limited supply of psychiatric beds throughout the United States, locating
available inpatient beds for individuals in need of psychiatric treatment is challenging.
Throughout the country, bed registries have been established to improve efficiencies
in the inpatient admission process, reducing strain on emergency departments and
providing information to family members on what hospital may have availability
for their loved one. In theory, a bed tracking system on an accessible online portal
can provide real-time information on where in a given state there is a bed available.
In practice, little is known about the effectiveness of these registries in improving
treatment access and what limitations there are to their use.
Study results
Researchers from RTI International conducted a systematic review of published academic
and grey literature on already published research on psychiatric bed registries.
In addition, they conducted interviews with key stakeholders in five states.
The researchers found 17 states with bed tracking systems, however, only five of
those states made the bed information available to the general public. No state
currently has a bed registry capable of updating automatically; all require the
input of bed availability information from the hospital directly.
States financed bed registries through federal grant dollars from the Substance
Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration as well as through Medicaid managed
care organizations. States have utilized a variety of different strategies to ensure
timely updates of bed availability into the system, including through legislation
(Virginia), part of the managed care contract (Massachusetts), or by using financial
incentives to hospitals (Connecticut).
The majority of interviewees reported that the bed tracking systems had improved
clinicians' abilities to find available inpatient psychiatric beds. However, many
barriers to implementation of the registries were raised. According to the authors'
findings, challenges included persuading hospitals to participate in the tracking
system, providers not having the knowledge about how to appropriately utilize the
system, and the registry not having enough information about beds meeting particular
patient needs.
Bed registries have an important function in providing evidence to the gaps in the
psychiatric treatment system. For example, in Massachusetts, government leaders
leveraged the information on bed registries to determine a need for more psychiatric
beds and convinced hospitals to open five more psychiatric inpatient units, according
to the authors. Regardless, more work is needed to improve bed tracking systems
to improve access to treatment for people with serious mental illness and make them
useful to their family members and clinicians.
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References:

*

Mark, T. L., et al. (2019, October). Bed tracking systems: Do they help address
challenges in finding inpatient beds? [[link removed]]
Psychiatric Services.
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Elizabeth Sinclair
Director of Research
Treatment Advocacy Center
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Research Weekly is a summary published as a public service of the Treatment Advocacy
Center and does not necessarily reflect the findings or positions of the organization
or its staff. Full access to research summarized may require a fee or paid subscription
to the publications.
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The Treatment Advocacy Center does not solicit or accept funds from pharmaceutical
companies.
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