background Patients with severe mental illness have a reduced life-expectancy and worse general health compared to the general public. The organisation of care for these patients is scattered between psychiatrist, gp and other specialists.
aim The research objective is assessing benefits and costs of a somatic team (st) for chronic psychiatric outpatients. Benefits will be described as newly identified and met healthneeds, costs will be described as cost of extra healthcare consumption by patients and the cost of the st.
method A screening of health is done yearly in chronic psychiatric outpatients, the outcome is reported to the treating psychiatrist.
A somatic team (st, doctor and nurse practitioner) will care for a selected group of patients, they assess the health and coordinate the necessary care.
A matched control group will be formed from the care as usual group, measurements at 0,6 and 12 months,  starting February 2010.
results The benefit and costs of the somatic team. The costs consist of the health care usage, medication and st. Benefits are estimated as improved health, described as subjective current health  (honos, quality of life, cgi) and objective current health (e.g. laboratory measurements cholesterol, number and type of co morbid diseases).
conclusion At the request of the ethical committee we changed the earlier randomized design into a case control design.