To highlight the revolving door (RD) phenomenon in an acute psychiatric ward, we retrospectively identified the patients hospitalized three or more times in a calendar year from 1/1/2009 to 31/12/2013 as RD patients (RDP). We collected sociodemographic and clinical variables of RDP and statistically analyzed the potential RD risk factors. We divided RDP into "high" and "extremely high" utilizers and evaluated the variables related to more frequent readmissions. RDP represented 5.68% of all patients and their hospitalizations (RDH) 25% of all admissions. The statistically significant risk factors for all RDH were "disability pension," "substance abuse/dependence," "mild/severe aggressiveness," and "psychiatric and social rehabilitative programs". The comparison between "high" and "extremely high" utilizers showed that "manic episodes" and "personality disorders," among the diagnoses, "familial relational conflicts" and "violence/suicidality", among the hospitalization reasons, were statistically significant risk factors for more frequent readmissions. RD phenomenon was greatly affected by severe clinical conditions with social disability.

BackgroundSchizophrenia is a chronic mental illness that requires lifelong antipsychotic treatment. Therapy discontinuation, often due to poor adherence, increases the risk of relapses after both first and subsequent psychotic episodes. Long-acting injectable (LAI) antipsychotic drugs (APDs) have been introduced to increase therapeutic adherence, reducing blood-level variability compared to corresponding oral preparations.PurposeTo compare the effectiveness of three LAI-APDs: aripiprazole (Apr) prolonged release once monthly (OM) haloperidol decanoate (Hal-D) and paliperidone palmitate (PP-OM).MethodsWe retrospectively collected data for all patients with schizophrenia or other psychoses (n=217) treated with the three LAI-APDs for the first time from January 1, 2012 to October 31, 2016: n=48 with Apr-OM, n=55 with Hal-D, and n=114 with PP-OM. After 6 and 12 months of LAI treatments, we assessed clinical and functioning improvement, urgent consultations, psychiatric hospitalizations, adverse effects, and dropout. We compared urgent consultations and psychiatric hospitalizations required by the same patient 6 and 12 months before and after LAI implementation. Data were statistically analyzed.ResultsThe three LAI groups differed significantly only for “need for economic support from social service” (more frequent in the Hal-D group) and “schizoaffective disorder” (prevalent in the Apr-OM group). Apr-OM was prescribed at the maximum dose required by the official guidelines, whereas the other two LAIs were prescribed at lower doses. After 6 and 12 months’ treatment with the three LAI-APDs, we registered similar and significant reductions in both urgent consultations and psychiatric hospitalizations (P<0.001) and overlapping clinical and functioning improvement-scale scores (P<0.001), and 14.28% of patients dropped out, with no difference among the three LAI-APDs. Different kinds of adverse effects, though similar for number and severity, were reported in the three LAI groups.ConclusionOur results suggest that both first- and second-generation LAI-APDs represent important therapeutic options, useful for improving schizophrenia’s clinical course and its economic burden. Our study, which offers a wide and comprehensive observation of real-world clinical settings, combined an effectiveness evaluation through mirror analysis performed for each individual patient to a subsequent comparison among the three LAI-APDs, allowing us a more complete evaluation of clinical efficacy.

IntroductionThe term ‘revolving door (RD) phenomenon” was coined to define recurrent hospitalizations of chronically ill patients after closure of psychiatric hospitals and implementation of community treatments.ObjectivesContinued readmissions require a large portion of Mental Health Departments’ resources.AimsTo analyze the RD phenomenon in an acute psychiatric ward during a 5-year period.MethodsWe retrospectively selected all patients with 3 or more hospitalizations per year from 01/01/ 2009 to 31/12/2013 in SPDC-Modena Centro. From their medical records we collected selected variables, potential predictors of RD phenomenon. Data were statistically analyzed.ResultsIn the 5-year period, a sample of 105 patients (47 females, 58 males) with an average age of 40.25 years (± 13.47 SD), 5.68 % of all inpatients (n = 1850), realized 778 hospitalizations, 23.94 % of all admissions (n=3250). The most frequent reason for admission was ‘worsening of psychiatric symptomatology” (55.27%). The most frequent diagnoses at discharge were ‘Schizophrenia” (41.26%) and ‘Personality Disorders” (25.32%). Most of RD patients (87%) were Italian, only 15 % were employed and 50 % lived with family. The mean duration of RD hospitalizations (12.23 days ± 18.37 SD) was statistically significantly different from all others in the 5-year period (10.39 days ± 11.09 SD, p=0.0008, t test) as was the frequency of compulsory admissions (RD hospitalizations 18% vs. 26% all others, chi2, p<0.001).ConclusionsOur RD patients represented a small percent of all inpatients but required many and long hospitalizations, probably due to severe and disabling illness.

This naturalistic study indicates that long-term PP1M treatment was safe and effective in preventing hospitalizations and urgent consultations as well as in improving clinical course.

Background: In West during the last decades, the phenomenon of "bed blockers" has been more frequently investigated, probably because of increasing economic constraints in the management of public health. According to most authors, the lack of rehabilitation facilities, organizational problems within the hospital, the long wait for medical consultations and\ud diagnostic procedures would be the main causes of "delayed discharge". Early studies were carried out in long-term care, rehabilitation and post-acute geriatric wards. In Psychiatry, the few studies on this topic highlighted a wide range of causes, including both patient conditions and organizational health system problems. In Italy, the problem of psychiatric delayed discharges has become more pressing after the 180 Law, which established the closure of all psychiatric hospitals and implemented psychiatric wards inside General Hospitals to admit only 15 acute patients for a very short period.\ud Purposes: To highlight the phenomenon of long-stay in an acute psychiatric ward and to relate it to demographic, clinical and organizational variables.\ud Methods: The survey was conducted in the 15-bed public psychiatric ward of Modena (Italy). All admissions were retrospectively collected from the database of the Department from 1 January 2005 to 31 December 2011 (3981 hospitalizations with an average stay of 12.49 days). Demographic data, clinical variables, inpatient care problems, discharge programs were statistically related to the duration of admissions (survival analysis: log-rank test, Kaplan-Meier\ud curves). The 3981 hospitalizations were divided into two groups according to the 90° percentile of duration: < 27 days (n=3575) and ≥ 27 days (n=406) and the variables of the two groups were compared (multiple logistic regression). Secondary analysis was conducted on the subgroup of the longest hospitalizations further divided into two groups according to the 90° (from 27 days to < 36 days) and 95° percentile (≥36 days), in order to find out variables related (survival analysis: log-rank test; multiple logistic regression test).\ud Results: The longest hospitalizations (≥27 days) represent 11% of all admissions during the observation period. When all variables are compared to the duration of hospitalizations, most of them are statistically significantly related to the length of hospitalizations, but, when statistical analysis was focused on the comparison between the two groups of the longest hospitalizations, a smaller number of variables (“gender”, “age”, “rehabilitative programs”, “extra-psychiatric clinical activities”, “pharmacotherapy” and “aggressiveness of patient”) were identified by survival analysis as statistically significant correlates of long-stay (log-rank test), whereas only “female gender” and aggressiveness pf patient” were the variables statistically significantly related to the length of hospitalizations evidenced by multivariate logistic regression analysis.\ud Conclusions: Our results suggest that a wide range of factors may be respons...