Financial aspects of court-ordered evaluations.

The authors sought to establish the financial cost of involuntary court-ordered evaluations and potential strategies for reducing these costs. Medical charges from the time of admission to the time of the court hearing were calculated for 998 patients who received involuntary court-ordered evaluations at the department of psychiatry of the Maricopa Medical Center in Phoenix, Arizona, in 1999. The average cost of an involuntary court-ordered evaluation was 8,236 dollars, and the average cost per day was 686 dollars. The analysis showed that several options could be used to reduce costs: expediting evaluations, holding court hearings on weekends and holidays, conducting evaluations on an outpatient basis, and housing patients in a less acute setting.