An increasing percentage of emergency visits and hospitalizations in the United States before the pandemic involved patients with alcohol and other substance use disorders, according to a study by UC San Francisco researchers. The authors say hospitals need to develop better ways to identify and treat those patients.
The study, led by Leslie Suen, MD, MAS, of the UCSF Department of Medicine, found that from 2014 to 2018, emergency department (ED) visits made by adults with alcohol and substance use disorders increased by 30 percent. Hospitalizations among patients with those disorders increased by 57 percent.