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Mental Disorders and/or Substance Abuse
related to 1 of every 8 visits to Emergency
Department
Newswise, July 2010 — Nearly 12 million
visits made to U.S. hospital emergency
departments in 2007 involved people with a
mental disorder, substance abuse problem, or
both, according to the latest News and
Numbers from the Agency for Healthcare
Research and Quality. This accounts for one
in eight of the 95 million visits to
emergency departments by adults that year.
Of these visits, about two-thirds involved
patients with a mental disorder, one quarter
was for patients with a substance abuse
problem and the rest involved patients
dealing with both a mental disorder and
substance abuse.
The federal agency’s analysis also found
that for the 12 million emergency department
visits involving mental health and/or
substance abuse problems:
o Depression and other mood disorders
accounted for 43 percent of the visits,
while 26 percent were for anxiety disorders
and 23 percent involved alcohol-related
problems.
o Mental health and/or substance
abuse-related visits were two and a half
times more likely to result in hospital
admission than visits not involving mental
disorders and/or substance abuse. Nearly 41
percent of mental disorder and/or substance
abuse-related visits resulted in
hospitalization.
o Medicare was billed for 30 percent of all
mental health and/or substance abuse
emergency department visits; private insured
was billed for 26 percent; the uninsured for
21 percent; and Medicaid 20 percent.
This AHRQ News and Numbers is based on data
in Mental Health and Substance Abuse-Related
Emergency Department Visits among Adults,
2007 (http://www.hcup-us.ahrq.gov/reports/statbriefs/sb92.pdf).
The report uses statistics from the 2007
Nationwide Emergency Department Sample, an
AHRQ database that is nationally
representative of emergency department
visits in all non-Federal hospitals.
The
Nationwide Emergency Department Sample
contains 26 million records from emergency
department visits from approximately 1,000
community hospitals nationwide. This
represents 20 percent of all U.S. hospital
emergency departments./b>