Length of Stay of Psychiatric Admissions in a Tertiary Care Hospital

INTRODUCTION: The length of stay among psychiatric in-patients is usually longer than that of others. Inpatient management is costly and longer length of stay can lead to catastrophic costs. We conducted this study to explore about the length of stay of psychiatric admissions and factors affecting it. METHODS: We collected the data of all the patients admitted to the psychiatric ward of B. P. Koirala Institute of Health Sciences from 1(st) January 2007 to 31(st) December 2016 from the database of the medical records section after ethical approval. The sociodemographic and clinical variables were analyzed using SPSS 20.0 version. Length of stay more than 3 weeks was considered as long stay. Bivariate and multivariable logistic regression analyses were conducted to identify factors associated with length of stay. RESULTS: There were 3687 admissions during the study period. The average length of stay was 19.36 (±13.14) days. On logistic regression, the factors associated with shorter length of stay were: male gender (aOR= 0.79, 95%CI: 0.68–0.93), being self employed (aOR= 0.17, 95%CI: 0.12–0.22), homemakers (aOR= 0.18, 95%CI: 0.14–0.24), farmers (aOR= 0.20, 95%CI: 0.15–0.27) and students (aOR= 0.23, 95%CI:0.17–0.32). Similarly, factors associated with longer length of stay were: being from other Eastern Terai districts (aOR=1.37, 95%CI: 1.11–1.70), other Eastern Hill districts (aOR= 1.68; 95%CI: 1.29–2.20), diagnosis of schizophrenia and related disorders (aOR=4.01, 95%CI: 1.3412.0), having medical co-morbidity (aOR= 3.47; 95%CI: 2.49–4.84) and being readmitted (aOR= 1.23, 95%CI: 1.03–1.47). CONCLUSIONS: There was significant association of length of stay with gender, age, address, occupation, diagnosis and readmission.