Quinlivan‐California 1995.

Methods	Allocation: randomised. Design: single centre. Duration: 24 months. Country: San Diego, California, USA.
Participants	Diagnosis*: major disorder DSM‐III‐R axis I. N = 90. Setting: San Diego County Mental Health Service. Age: > 18 years, 33% > 40 years, mean ˜ 37 years. Sex: 44% M (40M, 50F). Ethnicity: 43% non‐white (18% African‐American). History: ≧ 3 hospitalisations last 2.5 years.
Interventions	1. ICM: Assertive Community Treatment according to Stein and Test model. Caseload: 1:15. N = 30. 2. Non‐ICM: traditional CM programme, no team approach. Caseload: 1:40‐60. N = 30. 3. Standard care: services offered by the public mental health system. N = 30.
Outcomes	Service use: average number of days in hospital per month. Costs: direct costs of psychiatric hospital care. Unable to use ‐ Service use: other service use than hospital (reported incompletely). Global state: leaving the study early (not reported). Costs: direct costs of other psychiatric care (outcomes relevant to this review not directly examined).
Notes	*56% schizophrenia; 23% bipolar disorder. This is a 3‐arm study, data from the study are included in both comparisons addressed by the review: ICM versus non‐ICM and ICM versus standard care.
Risk of bias
Bias	Authors' judgement	Support for judgement
Random sequence generation (selection bias)	Unclear risk	Randomised, no further details.
Allocation concealment (selection bias)	Unclear risk	No information
Blinding (performance bias and detection bias) All outcomes	Unclear risk	Primary outcome: clinician/participant mediated ‐ rating ‐ Unclear. Secondary outcomes: ‐ rating ‐ Yes. No information provided, but available outcomes are not likely to be influenced by lack of blinding.
Blinding of participants and personnel (performance bias) All outcomes	Unclear risk	Blinding not reported.
Blinding of outcome assessment (detection bias) All outcomes	Low risk	Hospitalisation data were obtained from the county mental health services division's management information system. Costs were based on budgeted unit cost of each service multiplied by the total number of units as reported in the management information system.
Incomplete outcome data (attrition bias) All outcomes	Unclear risk	The study did not address this outcome.
Selective reporting (reporting bias)	Low risk	Listed outcomes of interest are reported completely.
Other bias	Low risk	No data provided. No evidence of the presence of other bias.