RESUMEN
BACKGROUND: For patients with multiple and complex health needs, such as those suffering from mental health disorders, outcomes are determined by the combined actions of the care providers they visit and their interactions. Care coordination is therefore essential. However, little is known on links between hospitals providing psychiatric care and community-based care providers which could serve as a basis for the creation of formal mental care networks supported by recent policies. In this context, we first aimed to identify and characterize existing types of healthcare provider patient-sharing networks for severe mental health disorders in one French region. Second, we aimed to analyse the association between their characteristics and the quality of the care they provide. METHODS: Patient flows among healthcare providers involved in treating severe mental health disorders in the Provence-Alpes-Côte-d'Azur region were extracted from the French national health data system, which contains all billing records from the social health insurance. Healthcare provider networks that have developed around public and private non-profit hospitals were identified based on shared patients with other providers (hospitals, community-based psychiatrists, general practitioners and nurses). Hierarchical clustering was conducted to create a typology of the networks. Indicators of quality of care, encompassing multiple complementary dimensions, were calculated across these networks and linked to their characteristics using multivariable methods. RESULTS: Three main types of existing healthcare provider networks were identified. They were either networks strongly organized around the main hospital providing psychiatric care; scattered networks involving numerous and diverse healthcare providers; or medically-oriented networks involving mainly physician providers. Few significant associations between the structure and composition of healthcare provider networks and indicators of quality of care were found. CONCLUSIONS: Our findings provide a basis to develop explicit structuring of mental care based on pre-existing working relationships but suggest that healthcare providers' patient-sharing patterns were not the main driver of optimal care provision in the context explored. The shift towards a stronger integration of health and social care in the mental health field might impact these results but is currently not observable in the administrative data available for research purpose which should evolve to include social care.