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The UCSF study shows that emergency visits and hospitalizations made by patients with addictions increased by 30% in 2014-2018
By Elizabeth Fernandez
A growing percentage of emergency visits and hospitalizations in the United States before the pandemic involved patients with alcohol and other substance use disorders, according to a study by researchers at UC San Francisco. The authors say hospitals need to develop better ways to identify and treat these patients.
The study, led by Leslie Suen, MD, MAS, of the UCSF Department of Medicine, found that from 2014 to 2018 visits to the emergency department (ED) by adults with alcohol use disorders and substances increased by 30%. Hospitalizations among patients with these disorders increased by 57%.
The authors found that during the study period, one in 11 ED visits and one in nine hospitalizations each year involved one person with some alcohol-related disorder or another.
“These statistics are comparable to common conditions such as heart failure, but hospitals and EDs are rarely as well equipped to treat addiction as they are to treat cardiovascular disease,” said Suen, a member of the University’s National Clinic Program. Columbia University (Philip R. Lee). Institute for Health Policy Studies.
“These data suggest that there is an urgent need for hospitals to develop hospital-based intervention systems to provide addiction treatment to those accessing emergency care and hospitalization. Models already exist that offer addiction services to the hospital, including the UCSF addiction care team at San Francisco General Hospital ”.
The study was published on September 13, 2021 in the Journal of General Internal Medicine.
The researchers found that patients with alcohol and other substance use disorders who entered the emergency department were more likely to have Medicaid health insurance, have depression, be homeless, receive mental health treatment, and have injuries. and trauma.
“Illness and death from complications from alcohol and other substance use are on the rise nationwide,” Suen noted. “Hospitals are a place where we can begin to reverse this trend, but we need to be prepared to identify and treat these patients while they are in the hospital and continue to follow and treat them after medical discharge.”
For the study, the researchers analyzed data from the National Hospital’s Outpatient Medical Care Survey, an annual survey administered by the National Center for Health Statistics. Alcohol use disorder and other substance use disorders were identified from patients ’medical records.
“Our estimate of alcohol and substance use disorders among ED visits is higher than in some other recent studies,” Suen said. “This is possible because our study is the first to use full reviews of medical charts, which are more likely to reflect the true prevalence of these disorders, rather than relying solely on billing diagnostic codes.”
UCSF co-authors are Leslie Suen, MD, MAS; Anil N. Makam, MD, MAS; Hannah R. Snyder, MD; Daniel Repplinger, MD; Margot B. Kushel, MD; Marlene Martin, MD; and Oanh Kieu Nguyen, MD, MAS. The study was supported by the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute. The authors do not declare any conflict of interest.
The University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) is focused exclusively on the health sciences and is dedicated to promoting health worldwide through advanced biomedical research, graduate education in life sciences, and health professions. excellence in patient care. UCSF Health, which serves as UCSF’s premier academic medical center, includes top-tier specialized hospitals and other clinical programs and has affiliations throughout the Bay Area.
[ad_2]Source: https://www.ucsf.edu/news/2021/09/421446/hospitals-face-urgent-need-addiction-treatment-emergency-departments [ad_2]
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