The term ‘revolving door (RD) phenomenon” was coined to define recurrent hospitalizations of chronically ill patients after closure of psychiatric hospitals and implementation of community treatments.

Continued readmissions require a large portion of Mental Health Departments’ resources.

To analyze the RD phenomenon in an acute psychiatric ward during a 5-year period.

We retrospectively selected all patients with 3 or more hospitalizations per year from 01/01/ 2009 to 31/12/2013 in SPDC-Modena Centro. From their medical records we collected selected variables, potential predictors of RD phenomenon. Data were statistically analyzed.

In the 5-year period, a sample of 105 patients (47 females, 58 males) with an average age of 40.25 years (± 13.47 SD), 5.68 % of all inpatients (n = 1850), realized 778 hospitalizations, 23.94 % of all admissions (n=3250). The most frequent reason for admission was ‘worsening of psychiatric symptomatology” (55.27%). The most frequent diagnoses at discharge were ‘Schizophrenia” (41.26%) and ‘Personality Disorders” (25.32%). Most of RD patients (87%) were Italian, only 15 % were employed and 50 % lived with family. The mean duration of RD hospitalizations (12.23 days ± 18.37 SD) was statistically significantly different from all others in the 5-year period (10.39 days ± 11.09 SD, p=0.0008, t test) as was the frequency of compulsory admissions (RD hospitalizations 18% vs. 26% all others, chi2, p<0.001).

Our RD patients represented a small percent of all inpatients but required many and long hospitalizations, probably due to severe and disabling illness.