Design: Retrospective cohort
Population: 4,232 admissions of 2,347 adults with alcohol use disorder in two US hospitals
Primary outcome: New alcohol-use-disorder medicine prescribed at discharge
Effect: 11% prescribed; family medicine service OR 2.07 (1.52–2.81) vs reference team

In two US hospitals without an inpatient addiction consult service, researchers reviewed 4,232 admissions among 2,347 adults with an alcohol-use-disorder diagnosis between 2018 and 2023. A new prescription for an approved alcohol-use medicine was issued at discharge in 467 admissions, or 11%.

The main associations were with how care was organised, not with the patient. Stays of three to four days (OR 1.70), care-management involvement (OR 1.37), and discharge from a general medicine teaching service (OR 1.41) or a family medicine service (OR 2.07) were linked to more prescribing.

This is a retrospective association in one US system, and the specific medicines available differ in India. The broader point holds: an admission is a rare chance to start treatment for alcohol use disorder, and most patients leave without it.

Ask every admitted patient with alcohol-related illness whether they want help to cut down or stop.
Consider starting an evidence-based medicine for alcohol use disorder before discharge, not leaving it to follow-up.
Check liver function and renal function when choosing an agent.
Link the patient to outpatient follow-up before they leave, with the prescription in hand.

Why it matters

Whether a patient leaves with treatment depended more on the team than on the patient.

The statistics, in plain English

An odds ratio of 2.07 for family medicine discharge means the odds of a new prescription were about twice those of the reference team. These are associations in observational data, and the teams may have differed in their patients as well as their habits.