Post-Discharge Mental Healthcare Reduces Readmissions in Emergency General Surgery Patients with Serious Mental Illness

A study of 88,092 Medicare patients over 65 with serious mental illness (SMI) found that a post-discharge mental health visit (MHV) within 30 days after emergency general surgery (EGS) hospitalization was associated with significantly lower odds of acute care readmission in both operative (odds ratio 0.60) and non-operative (odds ratio 0.67) groups. There was no observed impact on emergency department presentation or psychiatric admission. These findings suggest that post-discharge mental health care could help reduce readmission rates in this population.