Journal of Addiction & Prevention

Review Article

Inpatient Addiction Medicine Consultation on Readmission Rates and Length of Stay

Amer Raheemullah*, Huiqiong Deng, Lief E. Fenno and Anna Lembke

Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305, USA
*Address for Correspondence: Raheemullah A, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305, USA; E-mail: raheem@stanford.edu
Submission: 06 April, 2022
Accepted: 03 May, 2022
Published: 06 May, 2022
Copyright: © 2022 Raheemullah A, et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

Background: Patients with substance use disorders (SUDs) make up nearly one-third (29.1%) of hospitalized patients in the United States. They also have double the 30-day readmission and emergency department visit rates compared to those without SUDs. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has penalized hospitals $3 billion for higher 30-day readmission rates. Addiction medicine consultation has been shown to reduce 30-day readmission. However, their impact on Hospital length of stay remains largely unknown.
Methods: We compared admissions of repeat utilizer patients at Stanford Hospital with an ICD-10 diagnosis of a SUD and compared the 30-day readmission rate and length of stay in patients with and without an addiction medicine consult.
Results: The 30-day readmission rate and average LOS was 10.4% and 6.11 days for those that received a consult compared to 25.3% and 6.16 days in those that did not. Medicaid and Medicare patients made up 70.3% and 19.0% of the population, and addiction medicine consultation was found to be associated with a 61.4% and 69.5% reduction in 30-day readmission rate, respectively.
Conclusion: In patients with SUD who have a history of repeated hospital utilization, admissions that received an addiction medicine consult are associated with a decrease in 30-day readmission rate with no increase in length of stay compared to admissions that do not receive an addiction medicine consult.