2017 Volume 29 Issue 4 Pages 361-372
The ‘era of 5 diseases and 5 projects’ began in 2012 April, and it became obvious that the collaboration between general medicine and psychiatric medicine is important. Under this situation, additional payment to the psychiatric liaison team was introduced and was attractive to most of those engaged in the psychiatric medicine. At first, however, the increase of the number of facilities where it was applied was rather slow, due to its smallness of the actual payment amount and the strict standard which was required for its application.
In 2016 April, in the revision of the medical fee system, it was decided that the involvement of the psychiatric liaison team should be a significant requirement for the additional payment to the distribution of the psychiatric acute stage doctors. In addition, the team became one of the requirements for the additional payment to the general hospitalization system 2 & 3 and they caused the number of the facilities where the additional payment to the liaison team was applied to grow rapidly and succeeded in showing its importance.
When the psychiatric liaison team is regarded as a functional unit, which accelerates the collaboration between general medicine and psychiatric medicine, it can be seen that this additional payment to the liaison team contributes to the appraisal of General hospital Psychiatry both directly and indirectly. This implies new position and the possibility of the general hospital psychiatry, from the view point of the medical fee system.
