A field trial using Artificial Neural Networks to predict psychiatric in-patient Length-of-stay

Demands for health care reform will increase service utilization, much of which will fall on a system of expanded primary care providers, many of whom will not be specialists in psychiatry. These providers will need tools to augment their decision-making process. In this paper, we explore the use of Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs) in three different field sites to predict inpatient psychiatric Length-Of-Stay (LOS). This study describes the development and implementation of a runtime system in three different psychiatric facilities. Data was collected at these respective sites using the runtime system, and then this data was used to retrain the networks to determine if site-specific data would improve accuracy of prediction of LOS. The results indicate that ANNs trained with state hospital data could accurately predict LOS in two different community hospital psychiatric units. When the respective ANNs were retrained with approximately 10% new data from these specific hospitals, rates of improvement ranged from 3% to 15%. Our findings demonstrate that an ANN can adapt to different treatment settings and, when retrained, significantly improve prediction of LOS. Prediction rates by the ANN after retraining are comparable to results of a clinical team.