A paper titled “A Missed Opportunity: A Retrospective Cohort Study of Alcohol Use Disorder Pharmacotherapy in Hospitalized Patients” was published in the journal Alcohol & Alcoholism by authors Michka Nazon, Paola Lavin, William Pike, Kyle T. Greenway, Jérémie Richard, Paul L’Espérance, Michael Ostacher, Didier Jutras-Aswad, Steven Tate, Anna Lembke, and Nicolas Garel. The authors are affiliated with Stanford University School of Medicine, McGill University, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Université de Montréal, and Atropos Health.
Short summary: The paper uses EHR data from Stanford Healthcare between 2015–2023 to examine the association between inpatient administration of medication for alcohol use disorder and post-discharge emergency department visits and readmissions. Among 7,560 hospitalized adults with AUD, only ~3% received pharmacotherapy during admission, highlighting a significant gap in inpatient treatment initiation. After high-dimensional propensity score matching, no statistically significant differences were observed in emergency department visits or hospital readmissions at 3- or 12-month follow-up between patients who received MAUD and those who did not. These findings underscore the low use of evidence-based pharmacotherapy for alcohol use disorder in inpatient settings and an underutilized opportunity to improve implementation in clinical care.