Emergency department utilization for substance use disorders and mental health conditions during COVID-19.

ABSTRACT:

Background

As the emergency department (ED) has evolved into the de-facto site of care for a variety of substance use disorder (SUD) presentations, trends in ED utilization are an essential public health surveillance tool. Changes in ED visit patterns during the COVID-19 pandemic may reflect changes in access to outpatient treatment, changes in SUD incidence, or the unintended effects of public policy to mitigate COVID-19. We use a national emergency medicine registry to describe and characterize trends in ED visitation for SUDs since 2019.

Methods

We included all ED visits identified in a national emergency medicine clinical quality registry, which included 174 sites across 33 states with data from January 2019 through June 2021. We defined SUD using ED visit diagnosis code

SUBMITTER: Venkatesh AK 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8757912 | biostudies-literature | 2022

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature