Inpatient hospital use in the first year after release from prison: a Western Australian population‐based record linkage study

Abstract

Objective: To describe three aspects of inpatient use for ex‐prisoners within the first 12 months of release from prison: the proportion of released prisoners who were hospitalised; the amount of resources used (bed days, separations and cost); and the most common reasons for hospitalisation. Methods: Secondary analysis of whole‐population linked prison and inpatient data from the Western Australian Data Linkage System. The main outcome measure was first inpatient admission within 12 months of release from prison between 2000 and 2002 and related resource use. Results: One in five adults released from Western Australian prisons between 2000 and 2002 were hospitalised in the 12 months that followed, which translated into 12,074 inpatient bed days, 3,426 separations and costs of $10.4 million. Aboriginals, females and those released to freedom were most at risk of hospitalisation. Mental health disorders such as schizophrenia and depression, and injuries involving the head or face and/or fractures, accounted for 58.9% of all bed days. Ex‐prisoners were 1.7 times more likely to be hospitalised during a year than Western Australia's general adult population of roughly the same age. Conclusions: Using whole‐population administrative linked health and justice data, our findings show that prisoners are vulnerable to hospitalisation in the 12‐month period following their release from prison, particularly Aboriginals, females and those with known mental health problems. Implications: Further research is needed to assess whether contemporary services to support community re‐entry following incarceration have led to a measurable reduction in hospital contacts, especially for the subgroups identified in this study.

Indigenous Australians, Intellectual Disability and Incarceration: A Confluence of Rights Violations

“…They are also likely to be at a high risk of injury and illness following their release from custody (Stewart et al 2004;Alan et al 2011). It follows that the health and wellbeing of Indigenous prisoners with intellectual disability must be nested within this context.…”

From Custody to Community: Outcomes of Community-Based Support for Mentally Ill Prisoners

“…For ex-prisoners the post-release period is associated with a high risk of poor health and social outcomes, high rates of hospitalisation for mental health problems, substance-related problems and injury, and a markedly increased risk of death, most often due to drug overdose, suicide or preventable injury (Alan, Burmas, Preen, & Pfaff, 2011;Cutcher, Degenhardt, Alati, & Kinner, 2014;Forsyth, Alati, Ober, Williams, & Kinner, 2014). Research and service delivery attention is increasingly being directed toward examining programmes that may improve access to health services, reduce mortality and produce better outcomes when individuals are transitioning to the community (Angell, Matthews, Barrenger, Watson, & Draine, 2014).…”

A systematic scoping review of the domains and innovations in secondary uses of digitised health-related data

“…In addition to data linkage studies using health-related datasets, existing examples of studies using cross-sectoral data linkage included the linking of population-wide health and justice datasets in Western Australia to study hospitalisations among exprisoners during the first year after their release29 and seeking evidence to help plan healthy neighbourhoods across the lifespan by investigating measures of the built environment linked to health outcomes and to self-reported health behaviours 30…”