OUD Patient Death Rate 12 Months After Hospital Discharge on Par With Heart Attack Patients

In a study recently published by Oregon Health & Science University, about 8% of patients hospitalized with opioid use disorder died with a year of discharge, a rate similar to the 1-year death rate for those who had suffered a heart attack.

The findings were published in the Journal of Addiction Medicine.

Researchers looked at patients who were at least 18 years of age, had Medicaid insurance, and had an OUD diagnosis during a hospital admission in Oregon between April 2015 and December 2017. A total of 6,654 patients were hospitalized during the period studied. Of those, 522 died within 12 months after discharge, with 58% of deaths being attributed to drug-related causes.

The findings highlight the need for additional research on post-discharge mortality among hospitalized patients with OUD, as well as improvement in care systems that can mitigate the increased risk of death in this population, the researchers wrote in their conclusion.

“For heart attacks, hospital systems across the U.S. have universally accepted standards, metrics, and quality reporting that drives performance,” Honora Englander, MD, OHSU associate professor of medicine and the study’s senior author, said in a news release. “The same should be true for opioid use disorder, where death rates are similar.”