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Predictors of Readmission to an Acute Psychiatric Inpatient Unit

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2024

Aidan Turkington
Affiliation:
Belfast Health and Social Care Trust, Belfast, United Kingdom
Emily Stirling*
Affiliation:
Belfast Health and Social Care Trust, Belfast, United Kingdom
*
*Presenting author.
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Abstract

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Aims

The Acute Mental Health Inpatient Centre is an 80 bed acute psychiatric inpatient unit in Belfast. The inpatient unit is frequently over capacity resulting in the use of contingency beds or delays in accessing acute inpatient care. Readmissions to hospital after discharge remain a challenge for the service. A service evaluation project was designed to quantify the number of patients being readmitted and determine demographic and diagnostic variables associated with risk of readmission.

Methods

1084 sequential discharges were examined between Jan 2022 and Feb 2023. Age, gender and length of stay (LOS) were determined.

For each case it was determined whether or not the case was a readmission, defined as having been discharged within the previous three months.

Diagnosis was available on 1017 (94%) cases and was categorized as schizophrenia/non-affective psychosis, bipolar affective disorder, non-psychotic mental illness, personality disorder, adjustment disorder, substance misuse disorder and dementia/cognitive impairment.

Social deprivation status was determined for each case based on the address of admission and using social deprivation data from the Northern Ireland census, 2017.

Outcome of discharge was readmission at one week, one month and three months.

Results

For the entire cohort, readmission rates at one week, one month and three months were 5.1%, 13.6% and 20.7% respectively.

Risk of readmission was significantly increased in cases with a diagnosis of personality disorder, a LOS under two weeks and female gender.

Individuals who had been readmitted to hospital within three months of the index admission were significantly more likely to be readmitted in the subsequent three months.

Data on social deprivation is currently undergoing analysis and will be available in due course.

Logistic regression was performed to determine how the variables impacted on risk of readmission at 3 months. In the final model, diagnosis of personality disorder (OR 3.1; 95% CI 2.0, 4.7; p < 0.001), diagnosis of schizophrenia (OR 1.8; 95% CI 1.1, 2.7; p < 0.01), the admission being a readmission (OR 3.4; 95% CI 2.4, 5.0; p < 0.001), a LOS less than 2 weeks (OR 1.9; 95% CI 1.3, 2.7; p < 0.001) and female gender (OR 1.7; 95% CI 1.2, 2.4; p < 0.01) all predicted readmission within three months.

Conclusion

The service evaluation project has allowed individuals at a higher risk of readmission to be identified. This study has informed local strategies now being implemented to target community care and provide timely interventions to those groups at highest risk of readmission.

Type
4 Service Evaluation
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BY
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2024. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Royal College of Psychiatrists

Footnotes

Abstracts were reviewed by the RCPsych Academic Faculty rather than by the standard BJPsych Open peer review process and should not be quoted as peer-reviewed by BJPsych Open in any subsequent publication.

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