Patterns of acute psychiatric hospitalization in Massachusetts

Abstract

This study identifies long-term patterns of patient utilization in acute hospitals in Massachusetts based on the 47,787 psychiatric patients. Cluster analyses are used to identify six patterns of hospitalization based on the number and length of episodes, variety of institutions, length of stay, and time between stays. The study demonstrates that while the 74% of one-time patients with short stays use only a fifth (18.0%) of the bed days, the highest users were not the long-term users, but instead the 22.9% occasional extended-stay patients who use 70.0% of the total bed days. The study also finds that extending the length of the initial stay has little impact on limiting subsequent hospitalization.