Impact of COVID-19 pandemic on involuntary and urgent inpatient admissions for psychiatric disorders in a German-wide hospital network

The impact of COVID-19 on urgent and involuntary inpatient admissions, as well as coercive measures, has not been assessed so far. A retrospective study was performed analyzing claims data for inpatient psychiatric admissions between 2018 and 2020 (total n = 64,502) from a large German Hospital network. Whilst the total number of urgent admissions decreased in 2020 (12,383) as compared to 2019 (13,493) and 2018 (13,469), a significant increase in the percentage of urgent admissions was observed in 2020 (62.9%) as compared to 2019 (60.6%) and 2018 (59.7%). Compared to this study period, Odds ratio (OR) for proportion were 0.87 (0.84, 0.91) and 0.91 (0.87, 0.95) for 2018 and 2019, respectively (both p < 0.00001). Percentage of involuntary psychiatric admissions also significantly increased in 2020 and OR compared to this study period ranged from 0.86 (0.81, 0.93) in 2019 (p < 0.0001) to 0.88 (0.82, 0.95) in 2018 (p < 0.001). Proportion of coercive measures significantly increased in 2020 as compared to 2019 (p = 0.004). Taken together, the present study shows an increase in the proportion of involuntary and urgent psychiatric admissions during the whole pandemic year 2020 as compared to 2018 and 2019. The long-term impact of these COVID-19 pandemic-related trends on psychiatric health care needs to be assessed in further studies.