
Full text loading...
Background: Research on factors contributing to a patient's length of stay on youth psychiatric inpatient units is relatively scarce and increasingly dated given changes in health care. Objective: Hence, the current exploratory study attempts to take a step at identifying variables that are associated with length of stay for youth on an inpatient psychiatric unit in order to generate hypotheses for future larger-scale multisite research. Method: A chart review was conducted on consecutive admissions to an academic medical center youth psychiatric inpatient service from September 2011 to June 2014. Analyses are for 1,201 consecutive admissions (M age = 13.37, SD = 2.79), who were predominantly African American (54.0%) and female (58.3%). Results: Significant variables were entered into a hierarchical linear regression organized by variable category (i.e., patient characteristics, diagnostic/disease related, treatment-related characteristics, clinical caregiver characteristics, and characteristics or properties of the healthcare system). The final model accounted of 23% of the variance. Significant variables included insurance status, psychotic disorder, adjustment disorder, receiving pro re nata (PRN) medication for agitation during admission, being on a standing antipsychotic, change in attending from intake to discharge, presence of certain attendings during admission, and discharge to day hospital program or residential treatment center. Conclusion: These variables provide provisional information suggesting that factors from multiple categories are related to length of stay including patient characteristics, diagnosis, treatment-related, clinical caregiver, and healthcare system. It is critical to take into account factors both internal and external to the child when developing an understanding of length of youth psychiatric hospitalization.