Effectiveness of a nurse led hospital in-reach team and assertive follow-up of frequent attenders with alcohol misuse complications – a retrospective mirror image evaluation

Purpose – Physical comorbidities of alcohol misuse are common and result in frequent attendance to hospitals with estimated £3.5bn annual cost to the NHS in England. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the effect of the hospital in-reach team of the Leeds Addiction Unit (LAU) in reducing hospital service utilization in people with alcohol dependence. Design/methodology/approach – This is a retrospective cohort study, with a mirror-imagedesign. The authors included all patients who had wholly alcohol attributable admission(s) to Leeds Teaching NHS Hospitals Trust (LTHT) during a four-month period between January and April 2013 and received treatment from LAU. The primary outcome measures were changes in A and E attendance (A&E) attendances, number of hospital admissions and days spent in hospital between the three months before and after the LAU intervention. Findings – During the four-month period, there were 1,711 wholly alcohol attributable admissions related to 1,145 patients. LAU saw 265 patient...