{"pk":17104,"title":"Emergency Department Patients with Psychiatric Complaints Return at Higher Rates than Controls","subtitle":null,"abstract":"Study objective: At our 35,000 visit/year emergency department (ED), we studied whether patients presenting to the ED with psychiatric complaints were admitted to the hospital at a higher rate than non-psychiatric patients, and whether these patients had a higher rate of reevaluation in the ED within 30 days following the index visit.\n\n\nMethods: We reviewed the electronic records of all ED patients receiving a psychiatric evaluation from January to February 2007 and compared these patients to 300 randomly selected patients presenting during the study period for non-psychiatric complaints. Patients were followed for 30 days, and admission rates and return visits were compared.\n\n\nResults: Two hundred thirty-four patients presented to the ED and were evaluated for psychiatric complaints during the study period. Twenty-four point seven percent of psychiatric patients were admitted upon initial presentation versus 20.7% of non-psychiatric patients (p = 0.258). Twenty-one percent of discharged psychiatric patients returned to the ED within 30 days versus 13.4% of discharged non-psychiatric patients (p=0.041). Patients returning to the ED within 30 days had a 17.1% versus 21.6% admission rate for the psychiatric and non-psychiatric groups, respectively (p=0.485).\n\n\nConclusion: Patients presenting to this ED with psychiatric complaints were not admitted at a significantly higher rate than non-psychiatric patients. These psychiatric patients did, however, have a significantly higher return rate to the ED when compared to non-psychiatric patients.\n\n\n[West J Emerg Med. 2009;10(4):268-272.]","language":"en","license":{"name":"none","short_name":"none","text":"","url":"http://google.com"},"keywords":[{"word":"psychiatric"},{"word":"emergency department"},{"word":"Return Visits"},{"word":"overcrowding"},{"word":"Emergency Medicine"}],"section":"Article","is_remote":true,"remote_url":"https://escholarship.org/uc/item/5d8683v6","frozenauthors":[{"first_name":"Troy","middle_name":"E.","last_name":"Madsen","name_suffix":"","institution":"University of Utah","department":"None"},{"first_name":"Anne","middle_name":"","last_name":"Bennett","name_suffix":"","institution":"University of Utah","department":"None"},{"first_name":"Steven","middle_name":"","last_name":"Groke","name_suffix":"","institution":"University of Utah","department":"None"},{"first_name":"Anne","middle_name":"","last_name":"Zink","name_suffix":"","institution":"University of Utah","department":"None"},{"first_name":"Christy","middle_name":"","last_name":"McCowan","name_suffix":"","institution":"University of Utah","department":"None"},{"first_name":"Alex","middle_name":"","last_name":"Hernandez","name_suffix":"","institution":"University of Utah","department":"None"},{"first_name":"Stuart","middle_name":"","last_name":"Knapp","name_suffix":"","institution":"University of Utah","department":"None"},{"first_name":"Deepthi","middle_name":"","last_name":"Byreddy","name_suffix":"","institution":"University of Utah","department":"None"},{"first_name":"Scott","middle_name":"","last_name":"Mattsson","name_suffix":"","institution":"University of Utah","department":"None"},{"first_name":"Nichole","middle_name":"","last_name":"Quick","name_suffix":"","institution":"University of Utah","department":"None"}],"date_submitted":"2008-11-06T08:00:00Z","date_accepted":"2008-11-06T08:00:00Z","date_published":"2009-11-01T07:00:00Z","render_galley":null,"galleys":[{"label":"","type":"pdf","path":"https://journalpub.escholarship.org/westjem/article/17104/galley/8644/download/"}]}