Background: Trials in community psychiatry must balance rigour with generalisability. The UK700 trial failed to find a significant effect on hospitalisation, but its sample population contained significant heterogeneity of exposure to case management in the two groups.
Aims: To test whether patients successfully exposed to a minimum of 12 months' intensive case management over the 2-year follow-up period achieved reduced hospitalisation.
Method: Of 679 participants with hospitalisation data, 84 were identified as having < 12 months' exposure owing to prolonged hospitalisation, imprisonment or a combination of the two. These patients were excluded and outcomes tested for the remaining 595 patients.
Results: Overall reduced case-load size did not reduce hospitalisation or treatment costs over 2 years despite elimination of outliers. Age, previous hospitalisation and source of recruitment to the study all correlated with outcome.
Conclusions: Case-load reduction is not in itself enough to reduce the need for hospital care in psychosis. Baseline patient characteristics (in particular length of previous hospitalisation and recruitment from in-patient care) have a significant influence and should be allowed for in power calculations. Identifying the optimal clinical profile for patients likely to benefit from intensive case management remains a pressing need for further studies.