- At least 70 years old;
- Regular use of at least five medications;
- At least three chronic, comorbid conditions;
- Assistance with at least one activity of daily living; and
- Preadmission residence at home or at an assisted-living facility with a reasonable expectation of disposition back to that residence.
Researchers also wanted patients with common DRGs admitted, and set exclusion criteria as well: lack of fluency in English; admission primarily for a surgical procedure; terminal diagnosis with life expectancy of less than six months; and residency in a long-term care facility. Patients who could not be enrolled within 72 hours of admission were excluded.
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If you pick the high-risk patients and deliver the care in a bundle, you would be able to improve outcomes. When you deliver just pieces of the care … you get inconsistencies.—Andrew Masica, MD, MSCI, hospitalist, MedProvider Inpatient Care Unit, Dallas
Dr. Masica notes hospitalists interested in replicating the research should pay attention to the consent forms they used. When the Baylor team conducted its research from March to September 2007, they used a long-form consent waiver. Baylor’s consent form for similar studies has since been shortened, and Dr. Masica says a less complicated form would have helped encourage more patients to enroll. In the end, 60 patients declined to enroll in the Baylor study and 56 were unable to give their consent due to impairment.
Once enrolled, the patients were delivered the care bundle in stages (see Table 1). Care coordinators (CCs) saw patients daily, instructing them on specific health conditions with an eye toward teaching home care, should post-discharge problems arise. Clinical pharmacists (CPs) visited patients to focus on medication reconciliation and education. CCs and CPs would follow up with post-discharge phone calls to confirm receipt of medical equipment and medications, use and affects of those medications, home-health arrangements, and to schedule follow-up appointments. If patients indicated any issues, the coordinators recommended action plans.
“It would be surprising to find out how little patients really understand about why they’re in the hospital and what they’re being treated for,” Youngblood says. “To have the reinforcement is really valuable.”
Care Continuum
One topic the study skirts is the ever-contentious realm of post-discharge care and who takes over responsibility for patient care. While the Baylor study examined readmission/ED visit rates through 60 days, Dr. Masica says a transitional-care program is the best way to manage that care continuum.
“We did see a difference at 30 days,” Dr. Masica says. “At 60 days, that effectively washed out. That makes sense. You can only control things so much from the hospital side. After 30 days, you need transitional care, good primary care.”
Baylor’s research team is working on a follow-up study that would apply the coordinated-care bundle to specific disease management. Youngblood notes that directing specific services at a targeted population—for example, congestive heart failure patients—should show an even more concentrated reduction of 30-day recidivism. “The key is to identify the high-risk groups,” he says. “You can’t apply this to every single patient. That would be low-yield. Your yield is going to come in on the very high-risk folks.” TH
Richard Quinn is a freelance writer based in New Jersey.