An Ancillary Effect of Patient Navigation Following Detox: Fewer Arrests

Patient navigation (PN) is increasingly used to help people overcome barriers to accessing health care. In a recent trial, PN was added to motivational interviewing (MI) to help patients discharged from detoxification (detox) transition to follow-up care. The goal was to test whether PN in addition to MI increased transition rates and reduced subsequent readmissions into detox compared with MI alone. Results demonstrated little evidence of a treatment effect on either of these two outcomes, but post hoc exploratory analyses showed that patients who received PN were less likely to be arrested in the year following discharge than patients who did not receive PN. In addition, the group that received PN had fewer multiple arrests resulting in a lower average number of arrests per person. These findings are hypothesis-generating and need replication for conclusive inference. Nevertheless, economic analysis indicates that PN after detox could be a cost-beneficial intervention to reduce arrests among a population at high risk for involvement in the criminal justice system.