Cost analysis of different venues for treating suicide cases presented to the Emergency Department

Abstract

Patients presented with poisoning-related suicide attempts is one of the most problematic cases of the emergency services. The most important reason for this being the failure to decide the department of the hospital in which these patients should be admitted to, following consultation. The objective of this study is to emphasize the cost-lowering effect of treatment and follow-up of such suicide cases in Emergency Departments (ED) instead of intensive care units. A total of 791 adult patients with suicidal attempts were retrospectively examined and their clinical and demographic data were included. In addition, the costs of their treatment in the ED, Intensive Care Unit (ICU) and Psychiatric Clinic between 01/01/2007 and 31/12/2011were compared. When patients were classified by their month of birth it was found that patients who born in January had the maximum tendency to commit suicide (n:227, 28.7%), while those born in December were the least to do so (n: 30, 3.8%). Of all the patients, 122 (15.4%) were followed-up in Anesthesia Intensive Care (AIC), 639 (80.8%) in the Emergency Department Observation Unit and 30 (3.8%) in the Psychiatric Clinic. When costs of the patients who could receive the same medical treatment in case of necessity were compared; mean cost of the patients were found to be $ 665.44 for the patients treated in AIC, $ 204.09 for patients treated in EDs and $ 186.85 for those received treatments in the psychiatric clinic. We defined that it would be profitable if the intoxication cases were followed-up in the ED observation units and that ED's could be used more effectively than ICUs.