ABSTRACT
Income for hospital emergency psychiatry programs hardly ever come from patients out-of-pocket. More likely planners must look to a patchwork of funds: third-party payments, contracts for services generated through community mental health, training funds and supplements from the general hospital budget. Very often emergency psychiatry services are started up because "it's the right thing to do," the patients are "on our doorstep" or it is "a requirement for accreditation." The two merging entities began to collect statistical data to establish the amount of business each was doing and to compare patient lists to see if there was as much redundancy as staff was hypothesizing. Two actual budgets are highlighted here to emphasize their worth as models for other programs to copy. Their deficiencies are also discussed so that more attention to headings and content might be paid by administrators facing similar budgetting processes.
