The Oswin unit located in the North East of England is commissioned primarily for offenders screened on the offender personality disorder (OPD) pathway based on measures of personality disorder being linked to moderate to high risks to other persons.

The Oswin Unit was re-designed in early 2014 meeting commissioning specifications to meet objectives based on access, measuring quality and reducing. The primary objective of this pathway is to ensure personality Disorder offenders have access to “community-to-community”, joint-up care and monitoring of risks. The Oswin unit implemented a re-designed service offering individuals formulation based assessments and risk management embedded in the OPD pathway. The overall objective of this project is to evaluate the effectiveness and risk amelioration of this hospital-based service.

As part of a broader service development and evaluation project, the cost-effectiveness of the current model of the unit was compared to that of the unit prior to the redesign of the service.

Collection of data on number of admission and length of stay and calculation of expenses per capita. Retrospective analysis of costs of care.

Analysis of comparative figures post-implementation of this new model of care found 41% more episodes of care. Cost-analysis indicated a saving of £200,000.

The new Oswin Model meets commissioning objectives in offering access to hospital-based care and focused treatments for prisoners ‘stuck’ in prison pathways. This finding led to further investigation using thematic measures of quality of care to evaluate the effectiveness of this service and risk amelioration.

The authors have not supplied their declaration of competing interest.