[The CIMH Track Concept in Psychiatry: Syndrome-specific Treatment across Modalities - Part 1 - Theoretical background]

Abstract

During the past decades, important progress was made in the treatment of patients with mental disorders. Nevertheless, the guideline-based treatment still represents a significant challenge that must take into account novel diagnostic and therapeutic possibilities as well as recent social development and the economic framework. Therefore, there is a need for further improvement of care in inpatient, day-care and outpatient hospital units. An effective and economic over-arching treatment setting may be the so called "Track-unit". This is a symptom- and syndrome-based, decentralised, and modular constructed unit adjusted to the patient's individual stage-specific needs for his / her treatment across in- and outpatient sectors. This concept allows a team of clinicians to accompany a patient from acute (even coercive) admission through to discharge and outpatient department in order to ensure the best-fitted treatment providing a maximum continuity of care without break-points in responsibilities and information flow. The Track-unit may improve the quality of mental health care while at the same time meeting economic and social interests. However, its implementation is challenging for both staff and internal processes. Here, we focus on underlying principles of the Track-concept in a German psychiatric department emphasizing ethical, therapeutic, personnel, and educational benefits of this alternative and promising setting in modern psychiatry.