Although prospective payment using diagnostic related groups (DRGs) has been implemented for certain medical services during the past year, psychiatry in general and child psychiatry services in particular have been exempted from such forms of reimbursement. Since it is generally expected that psychiatry will not continue to be so exempted indefinitely, a preliminary study of 15 potential DRGs in a group of 184 children who received inpatient care were compared with respect to their mean length of hospital admission. Implications of these data for mental health policy are discussed.

To determine the extent to which University-Affiliated Facilities (UAFs) were directing training activities toward groups other than registered college and university students, data were collected from 23 interdisciplinary centers located in various areas of the country. During a 3-month study period, 822 inservice training programs were conducted involving over 1,100 professionals as presenters and over 23,000 persons as receivers of these inservice activities. Presentations which addressed essentials of appropriate programming for the handicapped occurred most frequently, with parents of handicapped children being a primary audience for these inservice training efforts. Findings also indicated the emergence of a broader professional role for the special educator.

Dissatisfaction with traditional diagnostic evaluations and conventional means of distinguishing between different types of handicapping conditions has led to consideration of alternate ways to assess classroom needs for children with behavioral disorders. Experience with short-term evaluation of children admitted to a psychiatric hospital has served as the basis for development of a diagnostic school model. It is designed to apply not only to those children normally considered behaviorally disordered but also to a variety of other children, ranging from severely mentally retarded to gifted, who present behavior problems. Based on six developmental continua, the program includes a 2-month period of classroom teaching to determine a child's or adolescent's readiness for eventual placement in a variety of regular or special classrooms. It further provides a means whereby interdisciplinary evaluation can be brought to bear on recommending approaches for both the antecedents and consequences of classroom behavior and learning problems.