Therapeutic leave and direct inpatient healthcare costs in inpatients with mental illness

Aims: Balancing the economic costs related to mental illness is a pressing matter globally. Scarce monetary and staff resources impose an ongoing challenge. Therapeutic leaves (TL) are an established clinical tool in psychiatry possibly improving therapy outcome and potentially lowering direct mental healthcare costs in the long term. We thus examined the association between TL and direct inpatient healthcare costs. Methods: We analyzed the association between the number of TL and direct inpatient healthcare costs in a sample of 3151 inpatients, using a tweedie multiple regression model, including eleven confounders. Using multiple linear (bootstrap) and logistic regression models we assessed the robustness of our results. Results: The tweedie model showed that the number of TL was associated with lower costs following the initial inpatient stay (B = -.141, CI 95% = [-0.225, -.057], p < 0.001). Results of the multiple linear and the logistic regression models matched those of the tweedie model. Conclusion: Our findings suggest a link between TL and direct inpatient healthcare costs. TL might lower direct inpatient healthcare costs. In the future RCTs might examine whether an increased utilization of TL leads to reduction of outpatient treatment costs and evaluate the association of TL with outpatient treatment costs and indirect costs. The systematic use of TL during inpatient treatment could reduce healthcare costs following the initial inpatient stay which is highly relevant due to global rise of mental illness and the associated financial pressure on healthcare systems.

Automated summary

Balancing the economic costs of mental illness is a global challenge, and therapeutic leaves may be a tool to improve therapy outcomes and lower long-term mental healthcare costs. Our study found that therapeutic leaves were associated with lower healthcare costs following inpatient stays, suggesting that their use may help reduce overall healthcare costs.