Association of community welfare resources and outpatient occupational therapy with psychiatric length of stay: A nationwide analysis in Japan

At the prefectural level, psychiatric bed density was independently associated with longer ALOS, whereas outpatient OT utilization and community-based welfare facility density were independently associated with shorter ALOS. These findings suggest that community-based therapeutic and welfare resources may be relevant to shorter hospital stays, although causal inference is limited by the cross-sectional ecological design.