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ABSTRACT: Background
Hospitalized patients are designated alternate level of care (ALC) when they no longer require hospitalization but discharge is delayed while they await alternate disposition or living arrangements. We assessed hospital costs and complications for general internal medicine (GIM) inpatients who had delayed discharge. In addition, we developed a clinical prediction rule to identify patients at risk for delayed discharge.Methods
We conducted a retrospective cohort study of consecutive GIM patients admitted between 1 January 2015 and 1 January 2016 at a large tertiary care hospital in Canada. We compared hospital costs and complications between ALC and non-ALC patients. We derived a clinical prediction rule for ALC designation using a logistic regression model and validated its diagnostic properties.Results
Of 4311 GIM admissions, 255 (6%) patients were designated ALC. Compared to non-ALC patients, ALC patients had longer median length of stay (30.85 vs. 3.95?days p??=80?years, female sex, dementia, diabetes with complications as well as referrals to physiotherapy, occupational therapy and speech language pathology. A clinical prediction rule that assigned each of these predictors 1 point had likelihood ratios for ALC designation of 0.07, 0.25, 0.66, 1.48, 6.07, 17.13 and 21.85 for patients with 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 points respectively in the validation cohort.Conclusions
Delayed discharge is associated with higher hospital costs and complication rates especially nosocomial infections. A clinical prediction rule can identify patients at risk for delayed discharge.
SUBMITTER: Bai AD
PROVIDER: S-EPMC6894295 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Dec
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
Bai Anthony D AD Dai Cathy C Srivastava Siddhartha S Smith Christopher A CA Gill Sudeep S SS
BMC health services research 20191204 1
<h4>Background</h4>Hospitalized patients are designated alternate level of care (ALC) when they no longer require hospitalization but discharge is delayed while they await alternate disposition or living arrangements. We assessed hospital costs and complications for general internal medicine (GIM) inpatients who had delayed discharge. In addition, we developed a clinical prediction rule to identify patients at risk for delayed discharge.<h4>Methods</h4>We conducted a retrospective cohort study o ...[more]