Three years ago, Andrew Masica, MD, MSCI, joined the MedProvider Inpatient Care Unit hospitalist group at Baylor University Medical Center (BUMC) in Dallas just as the national debate on Medicare recidivism rates was focusing on high-risk populations.
Dr. Masica’s master’s degree in clinical investigation, combined with the roughly 35 hospitalists operating at the 900-bed BUMC, suggested it made sense to see what Baylor’s doctors could add to the conversation. And a study was born: “Reduction of 30-Day Post-Discharge Hospital Readmission or ED Visit Rates in High-Risk Elderly Medical Patients Through Delivery of a Targeted Care Bundle.” The single-center study will be published in this month’s Journal of Hospital Medicine.
The study found readmission/ED visit rates were lower after 30 days for those given an individualized care bundle of educational information compared with those who received the center’s standard treatment (10% individualized care bundle compared with 38.1% for standard treatment, P=0.04). Analysis also showed that for those patients who had a readmission or post-discharge ED visit, the time interval to the second event was longer in the intervention group compared with the control group (36.2 days to 15.7 days, P=0.05). At 60 days, however, readmission/ED visit rates were not affected positively for the intervention group versus the control group (42.9% vs. 30%, P=0.52).
The study team emphasizes that its small sample size—20 in the intervention group, 21 in the control—make it nearly impossible to extrapolate the results to large population sets; however, the results fuel the debate. “We don’t want to overstate our conclusions,” says Dr. Masica, the principal study investigator. “Important questions need to be asked. Is it the specific characteristics of the care coordinators? Can you reproduce this at other facilities? Is it the care bundle or the personnel? …We view this as early-phase work that people can build upon.”
Expansion Opportunity
Still, Dr. Masica believes hospitalist-centric conclusions can be reached. Since the study used in-house personnel only, other HM groups could easily reproduce the bundle without added expense. Additionally, because the coordinated-care approach involves a checklist of patient interaction activities, not medical procedures, the barrier to replication is further reduced. However, hospitalists will need the cooperation of more than their own medical directors.
In BUMC’s case, that meant the assistance of patient-care support services and the pharmacy department. Liz Youngblood, RN, MBA, supervised the care coordination in her role as vice president of patient-care support services for the Baylor Health Care System. Brian Cohen, PharmD, MS, was the pharmacy lead. Dr. Masica notes the confluence between departments was one of the keys to the reduction in recidivism over the first 30 days post-discharge.
—Andrew Masica, MD, MSCI, hospitalist, MedProvider Inpatient Care Unit, Dallas
“If you pick the high-risk patients and deliver the care in a bundle, you would be able to improve outcomes,” Dr. Masica says. “When you deliver just pieces of the care—just the coordinated care or just the pharmacist—you get inconsistencies.”
The first struggle BUMC researchers encountered—once they secured funding from Baylor’s Institute for Health Care Research and Improvement—was enrolling enough patients who met the criteria set for the study. The high-risk patient thresholds were: