Collaboration Is Key to Improving Hospital Care for Patients With Medical and Psychiatric Comorbidity

Over the past 2 decades, hospitals have been increasingly called on to provide stabilization and treatment of pediatric patients with mental health symptoms. At least 1 in 10 hospitalized children >3 years has both a medical and a psychiatric condition,1 and the population of hospitalized patients with significant psychiatric morbidity is growing.2 Patients who have conditions affecting both their mental and physical health are in need of integrated medical and psychiatric treatments, and hospitals report challenges ensuring teams are prepared to care for these patients.3 In this month’s Hospital Pediatrics , Ibeziako et al4 provide a new window into understanding the characteristics of patients with eating disorders and somatoform disorders with an eye toward advancing the quality of their inpatient care. In this single-center, retrospective cohort study of 250 patients, Ibeziako et al4 found that patients hospitalized for eating disorders and somatoform disorders shared similar demographic characteristics, stressors, and coping styles. Nevertheless, a number of their medical and psychiatric symptoms and treatments differed. Eating disorder patients had higher rates of depression, suicidal ideation, and self-injury and required more laboratory testing, whereas somatoform disorder patients had greater fragmentation of their care, more neurologic evaluation, more specialty consults, and higher rates of learning disabilities. The reported findings highlight the value of a team approach to providing hospital care to patients with eating disorders and somatoform disorders. Efforts to use data like those reported by Ibeziako et al4 …