Patterns of mortality risk among patients with substance use disorder: an opportunity for proactive patient safety?

• BackgroundPatients with substance use disorder (SUD) suffer from excess mortality compared to the overall population. This study aims to identify patterns in death rates among patients with SUD visiting a SUD emergency ward and to explore whether this knowledge can be used as input to identify patients at risk and increase patient safety.MethodsHospital visit data to a SUD emergency ward were collected between 2010 and 2020 through medical records. Data included gender, age, SUD diagnosis, and the time of death. The Kruskal-Wallis rank sum test was used to test between ordinal variables, and risk ratio was used to quantify the difference in mortality risk. All statistical tests were two-sided, with a 95% confidence interval and a minimum significance level of 0.05.ResultsThe male patients in the study group had 1.41–1.59 higher mortality risk than the female patients. The study revealed an average death rate of 0.14 among all patients during the study period. Although patients with a diagnosed alcohol use disorder constituted 73.7% of the cohort, having an opioid use disorder or sedative hypnotics use disorder was associated with the highest death rates; 1.29–1.52 and 1.47–1.74 higher mortality risk than those without such diagnoses.ConclusionThis study demonstrates that data from visits to SUD emergency wards can be used to identify mortality risk factors, such as gender, type of diagnosis, number of diagnoses, and number of visits to the SUD emergency ward. Knowledge about patterns of patient visits and mortality risk could be used to increase patient safety through a decision support tool integrated with the electronic medical records. An improved system for early detection of increased mortality risk offers an opportunity for an adaptive patient safety system.

Subject headings

MEDICIN OCH HÄLSOVETENSKAP  -- Hälsovetenskap -- Folkhälsovetenskap, global hälsa, socialmedicin och epidemiologi (hsv//swe)

MEDICAL AND HEALTH SCIENCES  -- Health Sciences -- Public Health, Global Health, Social Medicine and Epidemiology (hsv//eng)

MEDICIN OCH HÄLSOVETENSKAP  -- Hälsovetenskap -- Beroendelära (hsv//swe)

MEDICAL AND HEALTH SCIENCES  -- Health Sciences -- Substance Abuse (hsv//eng)

MEDICIN OCH HÄLSOVETENSKAP  -- Klinisk medicin -- Psykiatri (hsv//swe)

MEDICAL AND HEALTH SCIENCES  -- Clinical Medicine -- Psychiatry (hsv//eng)

Keyword

Patient safety

Psychiatry

Emergency ward

Substance use disorder

Mortality

Risk

Patient safety

Psychiatry

Emergency ward

Substance use disorder

Mortality

Risk

Publication and Content Type

art (subject category)

ref (subject category)