Pre-discharge factors predicting readmissions of psychiatric patients: a systematic review of the literature

BMC Psychiatry

Table 7 Synthesis of the main results regarding contextual factors: environmental, social and hospital

Variables	Number of studies resulted significant/Number of studies analysing the variable	Main significant results^a (bivariate)	Main significant results^a (multivariate)
Urban/metropolitan vs rural^b	2/5	Mixed direction (2)	Urban residence risk factor (1)
Environmental variables, services distance and availability of resources	1/2	No significant association	Living in close proximity to a Narcotics Anonymous meeting location risk factor while living in areas with higher educational attainment protective factor (1)
Physician characteristics and other hospital-level variables	2/2	Different variables analysed and found significant (2)	Number of Medicaid patients with mental or substance use disorder (1) and shorter median LoS (1) risk factor
Fee-for-service or capitated Medicaid plan or (type of) insurance coverage	3/4	Mixed direction (2)	Medicaid (vs commercial insurance) protective factor (1)
Social support	9/14	Social support protective factor (6)^c (different variables analysed)	Social support protective factor (4) (different variables analysed)

^aThe number of significant results (when present) is reported in brackets for each variable. Please note that such numbers refer to the papers, and that more than one variable in the same row could be analysed in the same paper; moreover, not all studies conduct both bivariate and multivariate analysis
“Mixed direction” means that the variable resulted significant in more than one paper, but the results were contrasting
^bSee the text for differences in readmission risk related to hospital or discharge location referred to specific national situations
^cplus 1 where readmission status was associated with having increased levels of perceived treatment support from significant others

ISSN: 1471-244X