Improving Patient Flow and Access to Care at an Academically Affiliated Urban Safety-Net Hospital.

Access to inpatient psychiatric beds remains a significant barrier to care for patients having a mental health crisis. A quality improvement initiative described here was designed to increase access to care by increasing efficiency of health care delivery on an adult and adolescent inpatient psychiatric unit. Design and implementation centered on collaborative relationships among hospital administration, physician leadership, frontline physicians, and members of the multidisciplinary treatment team.