Safety Planning for Suicidal Patients in ED Linked to Lower Readmissions

Patients with suicidal behavior who received a safety plan —a set of suicide-prevention strategies—during an emergency department (ED) visit were less likely to be readmitted to the ED or the hospital for suicidal behavior or other mental health problems within 30 days of discharge than those who went to a hospital without routine safety planning. The f inding appeared in astudy published today inPsychiatric Services.“Our findings support the notion of making safety planning universally available in EDs for patients with suicidal behavior and as a standard component of outpatient mental health care,” wrote Sara Wiesel Cullen, Ph.D., M.S.W., of the School of Social Policy and Practice at the University of Pen nsylvania and colleagues.Between May 2017 and January 2018, Cullen and colleagues mailed and emailed a survey about management of self-harm to a random selection of 665 hospitals that had recorded five or more ED episodes related to self-harm in the previous year. The contacted hospitals were linked with a patient population derived from a database of deidentified information on millions of individuals privately insured through UnitedHealthcare. The final sample included the 130 hospitals that had returned a completed survey and 2,328 patients who had continuous insurance eligibility 30 days before and after their ED visit.The hospital survey included questions on how frequently EDs implemented the components of safety planning:Helping patients recognize the warni...
Source: Psychiatr News - Category: Psychiatry Tags: emergency department Psychiatric Services Sara Wiesel Cullen suicidality suicide safety planning University of Pennsylvania Source Type: research