Receipt of evidence-based alcohol-related care in a national sample of transgender patients with unhealthy alcohol use: Overall and relative to non-transgender patients

Abstract

Background/objective: Evidence-based alcohol-related care–brief intervention for all patients with unhealthy alcohol use and specialty addictions treatment and/or pharmacotherapy for patients with alcohol use disorder (AUD)–should be routinely offered. Transgender persons may be particularly in need of alcohol-related care, given common experiences of social and economic hardship that may compound the adverse effects of unhealthy alcohol use. We examined receipt of alcohol-related care among transgender patients compared to non-transgender patients in a large national sample of Veterans Health Administration (VA) outpatients with unhealthy alcohol use. Methods: We extracted electronic health record data for patients from all VA facilities who had an outpatient visit 10/1/09–7/31/17 and a documented positive screen for unhealthy alcohol use (AUDIT-C ≥ 5). We identified transgender patients with a validated approach using transgender-related diagnostic codes. We fit modified Poisson models, adjusted for demographics and comorbidities, to estimate the average predicted prevalence of brief intervention (documented 0–14 days following most recent positive screening), specialty addictions treatment for AUD (documented 0–365 days following screening), and filled prescriptions for medications to treat AUD (documented 0–365 days following screening) for transgender patients, and compared to that of non-transgender patients. Results: Among transgender Veterans with unhealthy alcohol use (N = 1392), the adjusted prevalence of receiving brief intervention was 75.4% (95% CI 72.2–78.5), specialty addictions treatment for AUD was 15.7% (95% CI 13.7–17.7), and any AUD pharmacotherapy was 19.0% (95% CI 17.1–20.8). Receipt of brief intervention did not differ for transgender relative to non-transgender patients (Prevalence Ratio [PR] 1.01, 95% CI 0.98–1.04, p = 0.574). However, transgender patients were more likely to receive specialty addictions treatment (PR 1.24, 95% CI 1.12–1.37, p < 0.001) and pharmacotherapy (PR 1.16, 95% CI 1.06–1.28, p = 0.002). Conclusions: Findings suggest the majority of transgender VHA patients with unhealthy alcohol use receive brief intervention, though a quarter still do not. Nonetheless, rates of specialty addictions treatment and pharmacotherapy are low overall, although transgender patients may be receiving this care at greater rates than non-transgender patients. Further research is needed to investigate these findings and to increase receipt of evidence-based care overall.