Are early post‐discharge physician contacts associated with 30‐day psychiatric re‐hospitalisation? A nationwide claims data based retrospective cohort study in Austria free of immortal time bias

Objectives Cost containment and quality of care considerations have increased research interest in the potential preventability of early re‐hospitalisations. Various registry‐based retrospective cohort studies on psychiatric re‐hospitalisation have focused on the role of early post‐discharge service contacts, but either did not consider their time‐dependent nature (‘immortal time bias’) or evaded the issue by analysing late re‐hospitalisations. The present study takes care of the immortal time bias in studying early psychiatric re‐hospitalisations. Methods In a retrospective cohort study using nationwide electronic claims data in Austria, 10,689 adults discharged from acute psychiatric inpatient wards were followed up for 30 days. Cox regression analyses were performed with post‐discharge psychiatric and general practitioner contacts as time‐dependent covariates and time to first psychiatric re‐hospitalisation as outcome. Results Post‐discharge ambulatory physician contacts were significantly associated with a decreased psychiatric re‐hospitalisation rate (hazard ratio 0.77 [95% CI 0.69; 0.87], p