Evidence of “Repeated Admission Bias” Among Those Who Use Injection Drugs Across 2 Decades of US Treatment Admissions: 2000–2020

Original research
by
Bormann, Nicholas L. & Stephan Arndt

Release Date

2024

Geography

USA

Language of Resource

English

Full Text Available

No

Open Access / OK to Reproduce

No

Peer Reviewed

Yes

Objective

We sought to quantify the methodologic bias incorporated by using all encounters versus initial encounters and assess if this risk is evenly distributed across all routes of drug administration.

Findings/Key points

Using encounter-based datasets can introduce bias when including all admissions versus exclusively initial treatment episodes. This report is the first to quantify this bias and shows that individuals with IDU are at highest risk for returning to treatment, thereby over-representing this method of use when all encounters are used.

Design/methods

TEDS-A 2000–2020 dataset with nonmissing primary substance data was used.

doi.org

Keywords

Injecting drugs
Hospitals
About PWUD