Study Highlights Need for Addiction Treatment in Emergency Departments

Researchers from the University of California San Francisco have found that the number of emergency department visits and hospitalizations by patients with alcohol and other substance use disorders has increased in recent years, highlighting a need for hospitals to develop better ways to identify and treat those patients.

Findings from the study, which was based on data from the National Hospital Ambulatory Medical Care Survey, were published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine.

From 2014 to 2018, emergency department visits by adults with alcohol and substance use disorders increased by 30%, and hospitalizations increased by 57%. During the timeframe studied, 1 out of 11 ED visits and 1 out of 9 hospitalizations involved a patient with AUD or SUD.

“These statistics are comparable to common conditions like heart failure, but hospitals and EDs are rarely as equipped to treat addiction as they are to treat cardiovascular diseases,” study lead author Leslie Suen, MD, MAS, a fellow in the National Clinician Scholars Program at the UCSF Philip R. Lee Institute of Health Policy Studies, said in a news release.

Patients with AUD or SUD who came into emergency departments were found to be more likely to have Medicaid health insurance, have depression, be experiencing homelessness, have received mental health treatment, and present with injury and trauma.

“Illness and death from complications of alcohol and other substance use are increasing nationally,” Suen said in the release. “Hospitals are one place where we can begin to reverse that trend, but we must be prepared to identify and treat these patients while they are in the hospital and continue following and treating them after they are discharged, as well.”