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Background: The regional mandatory care is a central element of psychiatric treatment in Germany. Therefore, it is possible to realize care near to the place of residence of psychiatric patients and good contact to the outpatient health system. Up to now the new payment system in psychiatry in Germany does not explicitly include this central factor., Aim: The article investigates which criteria possibly describe psychiatric mandatory care and whether they can be ascertained from routine data., Material: The results are based on the so-called § 21 records of 47 psychiatric and psychosomatic clinics all of which participated in the German VIPP (healthcare indicators in psychiatry and psychosomatics) project. It is obligatory to send the standardized § 21 record to the Institute for the Hospital Remuneration System (InEK) annually., Results: The study identified two factors which could describe clinics with regional mandatory care. Many patients attend these hospitals outside the core time of Monday to Friday, 8 am to 5 pm and the distance to their place of residence is shorter. This is associated with a higher day-related valuation, the so-called day mix index (DMI)., Discussion: Routine data contain information describing regional mandatory psychiatric care. Patients treated in this system show a higher DMI. This means higher proceeds for the hospitals but it is not clear if these proceeds are able to cover the higher costs in clinics with regional mandatory care. Therefore, it is necessary for the InEK to set up a new cost center for all clinics which participate as a so-called calculation site. By posting all structural costs of mandatory care in this cost center it will be possible to compare them with the income of psychiatric clinics in the future.

Background: In Germany a new reimbursement system for psychiatry and psychosomatics is under development. Based on total costs of each case from selected hospitals and day clinics, in 2013 the Institute for the Hospital Remuneration System (InEK) proposed to reimburse the hospital costs daily with step-wise decreasing remuneration, mainly depending on the ICD-10 diagnosis, duration of stay and some complicating factors (PEPP grouper). It is controversial whether this degressive system will result in an inadequate remuneration of patients with longer duration of severe symptoms, such as suicidality in depression or autoaggressive behavior in borderline personality disorder and will eventually lead to advantages for acutely ill patients with short duration of stay compared to chronically ill patients., Objectives: This study formulated and tested an alternative remuneration system (proof of concept) mainly based on an analysis of daily cost data instead of the total costs of each case., Material and Methods: The study is based on 147,749 treatment days from 4,633 cases of patients with psychotic disorders (PEPP-PA03) in 6 hospitals. As possible cost separating factors the study analyzed days with and without intensive psychiatric care, 1 to 1 care, psychological diagnostics, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), acute crisis intervention, age at admission, the first days of treatment and day of discharge., Results and Discussion: Nearly all factors tested were shown to be statistically significant in separating daily hospital costs. Based on these findings an alternative calculation algorithm (TEPPconcret), which grouped the cases with respect to age, intensive care, 1 to 1 care, treatment days 1-4 and day of discharge, was formulated and tested. For psychotic disorders TEPPconcret with a basic rate complemented by daily add-on payments depending on the effort involved, is a serious alternative to the PEPP system and awaits further evaluation.