Occurrence of Stigmatizing Documentation Among Hospital Medicine Encounters With Opioid-Related Diagnosis Codes: Cohort Study.

Background: Physician use of stigmatizing language in the clinical documentation of hospitalized adults with opioid use is common. However, patient factors associated with stigmatizing language in this setting remain poorly characterized.

Objective: This study aimed to determine whether specific demographic factors and clinical outcomes are associated with the presence of stigmatizing language by physicians in the clinical documentation of encounters with opioid-related ICD-10 (International Statistical Classification of Diseases, Tenth Revision) codes.

Methods: Hospital encounters with one or more associated opioid-related ICD-10 admission diagnoses on the hospital medicine service during the 2020 calendar year were analyzed for the presence of stigmatizing language in history and physical and discharge summaries. Multivariable adjusted logistic regression models were used to determine associations of age, race, gender, medication for addiction treatment use, against medical advice discharge, homelessness, comorbid polysubstance use, comorbid psychiatric disorder, comorbid chronic pain, cost, and 30-day readmission with the presence of stigmatizing language.

Results: A total of 221 encounters were identified, of which 64 (29%) encounters had stigmatizing language present in physician documentation. Most stigmatizing language was due to use of "substance abuse" rather than the preferred term "substance use" (63/66 instances). Polysubstance use and homelessness were independently associated with the presence of stigmatizing language (adjusted odds ratio [aOR] 7.83; 95% CI 3.42-19.24 and aOR 2.44; 95% CI 1.03-5.90) when controlling for chronic pain and other covariates.

Conclusions: Among hospital medicine encounters with an opioid-related diagnosis, stigmatizing language by physicians in clinical documentation was common and independently associated with comorbid polysubstance use and homelessness.