The appropriateness of the treatment setting for the inpatient post-acute treatment of alcohol dependence disorders in Switzerland

All completed treatments conducted in the Forel-Hospital – the largest clinic of its kind in Switzerland – between the 1st of January 2004 and the 20th of December 2006 were included in the investigation (n = 915). Patient and treatment characteristics were gathered using the information from the PSYREC and act-info questionnaire. The AWMF criteria were operationalized on the basis of the questionnaire.Applying the AWMF criteria resulted in the emergence of three groups: 73.7% of the study sample could clearly be assigned to the inpatient treatment group, and for 7.5% there was evidence supporting the allocation to an outpatient treatment setting. In 18.8% of the cases, however, the AWMF criteria did not allow an assignment to either of the treatment settings. Of the total sample, 18.5% of all patients apparently did not profit from the inpatient treatment setting, whereas for the vast majority (81.5%), a therapeutic progress was documented. In those patients who, according to the AWMF guidelines, did not need an inpatient setting, a larger proportion improved than in the group of the patients who needed an inpatient treatment in a specialized hospital. Furthermore, the logistic regression analyses revealed that the less severe the clinical state of a patient upon admittance, the higher the odds of improvement during the hospital stay.The results serve as evidence that for at least three out of four patients treated in the investigated specialized institution, an inpatient treatment was appropriate. The principal reason for the necessity of an inpatient treatment setting was that this hospital population showed severe psychiatric, somatic or social irregularities. Only a very limited number of patients hospitalized in a specialized institution for the treatment of alcohol-related disorders can be treated in an outpatient setting.The treatment of alcohol-related disorders can be divided into acute and post-acute treatment. An acute treatment consists of interventions