On the effectiveness of care co-ordination services aimed at preventing hospital admissions and emergency attendances.
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ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: Mayhew L
PROVIDER: S-EPMC2713026 | biostudies-other | 2009 Sep
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-other
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Project description:ObjectivesThe aim of this study was to describe the types of emergency departments (EDs), and the acuity, types and disposition of conditions managed at Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF)-supported EDs in humanitarian settings.Design, setting, participants and outcome measuresThis was a multicentre, cross-sectional review of visits to MSF-supported EDs from 1 January 2014 to 31 December 2018. EDs were classified into advanced-level, general-level, paediatric and trauma. Variables analysed included: age group, condition, acuity and ED disposition. Frequencies and percentages stratified by ED type or region were reported.ResultsMSF supported 26 EDs in 12 countries, with a total of 1 388 698 visits between 2014 and 2018. Most patients were discharged home (n=1 097 456, 79%), with nearly 0% mortality (n=4692). The majority of visits at general-level and paediatric EDs were for medical conditions (n=600 088, 78% and n=45 276, 96%, respectively), while nearly half of advanced-level EDs visits were for surgical conditions (n=201 189, 48%). Almost all visits to trauma EDs were for surgical conditions (n=148 078, 98%). Overall, most surgical conditions were traumatic injuries (n=484 008, 94%), the majority unintentional (n=425 487, 82%). The top three most common classified medical conditions were respiratory infections, malaria and diarrhoea.ConclusionsEDs are critical in improving the agility and access to emergency care (EC) in humanitarian settings. This study demonstrated that EC provision resulted in the majority of patients being discharged from EDs, helping prevent avoidable hospital admissions. These results could help better understand the healthcare needs of vulnerable populations, improve responsiveness to emergency conditions and support programmatic planning in humanitarian settings.
| S-EPMC8278912 | biostudies-literature
Project description:BACKGROUND: The objective is to estimate the cost-effectiveness of an intervention that reduces hospital re-admission among older people at high risk. A cost-effectiveness model to estimate the costs and health benefits of the intervention was implemented. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: The model used data from a randomised controlled trial conducted in an Australian tertiary metropolitan hospital. Participants were acute medical admissions aged >65 years with at least one risk factor for re-admission: multiple comorbidities, impaired functionality, aged >75 years, recent multiple admissions, poor social support, history of depression. The intervention was a comprehensive nursing and physiotherapy assessment and an individually tailored program of exercise strategies and nurse home visits with telephone follow-up; commencing in hospital and continuing following discharge for 24 weeks. The change to cost outcomes, including the costs of implementing the intervention and all subsequent use of health care services, and, the change to health benefits, represented by quality adjusted life years, were estimated for the intervention as compared to existing practice. The mean change to total costs and quality adjusted life years for an average individual over 24 weeks participating in the intervention were: cost savings of $333 (95% Bayesian credible interval $ -1,932:1,282) and 0.118 extra quality adjusted life years (95% Bayesian credible interval 0.1:0.136). The mean net-monetary-benefit per individual for the intervention group compared to the usual care condition was $7,907 (95% Bayesian credible interval $5,959:$9,995) for the 24 week period. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: The estimation model that describes this intervention predicts cost savings and improved health outcomes. A decision to remain with existing practices causes unnecessary costs and reduced health. Decision makers should consider adopting this program for elderly hospitalised patients.
| S-EPMC2759083 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Introduction:"Partners in Dementia Care" (PDC) tested a care-coordination program based on partnerships between Veterans Affairs (VA) medical centers and Alzheimer's Association chapters. The hypothesis posited PDC would reduce the likelihood and number of veterans' hospital admissions and emergency department (ED) visits, particularly for those with more cognitive impairment or behavioral symptoms. Methods:The sample included 328 veterans with dementia and their primary family or friend caregivers from five matched sites (two randomly selected treatment sites). Data came from VA records; supplemented by caregiver research interviews. Regression analyses using the likelihood and number of hospital and ED visits as outcomes tested for overall treatment-comparison group differences and statistical interactions with cognitive impairment and behavioral symptoms. Results:Consistent with the hypothesis, three significant interactions showed treatment-group veterans, with more cognitive impairment and behavioral symptoms, had fewer hospital admissions and ED visits than comparison-group veterans. There were no differences in the likelihood of hospital or ED use. Discussion:PDC, a low-cost program for veterans and caregivers, was effective in reducing the number, but not the likelihood, of hospital admissions and ED visits. Reductions in service use were greater when caregivers reported more difficulties with veterans' symptoms, which in the absence of PDC would place veterans at risk of being high-volume, high-cost service users.Clinical Trial Registration: ClinicalTrials.gov: NCT00291161.
| S-EPMC5975051 | biostudies-literature
Project description:ObjectiveTo examine the association between primary and community care use and measures of acute hospital use in people with cancer at the end of life.DesignRetrospective cohort study.SettingWe used Discover, a linked administrative and clinical data set from general practices, community and hospital records in North West London (UK).ParticipantsPeople registered in general practices, with a diagnosis of cancer who died between 2016 and 2019.Primary and secondary outcome measures≥3 hospital admissions during the last 90 days, ≥1 admissions in the last 30 days and ≥1 emergency department (ED) visit in the last 2 weeks of life.ResultsOf 3581 people, 490 (13.7%) had ≥3 admissions in last 90 days, 1640 (45.8%) had ≥1 admission in the last 30 days, 1042 (28.6%) had ≥1 ED visits in the last 2 weeks; 1069 (29.9%) had more than one of these indicators. Contacts with community nurses in the last 3 months (≥13 vs <4) were associated with fewer admissions in the last 30 days (risk ratio (RR) 0.88, 95% CI 0.90 to 0.98) and ED visits in the last 2 weeks of life (RR 0.79, 95% CI 0.68 to 0.92). Contacts with general practitioners in the last 3 months (≥11 vs <4) was associated with higher risk of ≥3 admissions in the last 90 days (RR 1.63, 95% CI 1.33 to 1.99) and ED visits in the last 2 weeks of life (RR 1.27, 95% CI 1.10 to 1.47).ConclusionsExpanding community nursing could reduce acute hospital use at the end of life and improve quality of care.
| S-EPMC8867349 | biostudies-literature
Project description:BackgroundPatients with multimorbidities have the greatest healthcare needs and generate the highest expenditure in the health system. There is an increasing focus on identifying specific disease combinations for addressing poor outcomes. Existing research has identified a small number of prevalent "clusters" in the general population, but the limited number examined might oversimplify the problem and these may not be the ones associated with important outcomes. Combinations with the highest (potentially preventable) secondary care costs may reveal priority targets for intervention or prevention. We aimed to examine the potential of defining multimorbidity clusters for impacting secondary care costs.Methods and findingsWe used national, Hospital Episode Statistics, data from all hospital admissions in England from 2017/2018 (cohort of over 8 million patients) and defined multimorbidity based on ICD-10 codes for 28 chronic conditions (we backfilled conditions from 2009/2010 to address potential undercoding). We identified the combinations of multimorbidity which contributed to the highest total current and previous 5-year costs of secondary care and costs of potentially preventable emergency hospital admissions in aggregate and per patient. We examined the distribution of costs across unique disease combinations to test the potential of the cluster approach for targeting interventions at high costs. We then estimated the overlap between the unique combinations to test potential of the cluster approach for targeting prevention of accumulated disease. We examined variability in the ranks and distributions across age (over/under 65) and deprivation (area level, deciles) subgroups and sensitivity to considering a smaller number of diseases. There were 8,440,133 unique patients in our sample, over 4 million (53.1%) were female, and over 3 million (37.7%) were aged over 65 years. No clear "high cost" combinations of multimorbidity emerged as possible targets for intervention. Over 2 million (31.6%) patients had 63,124 unique combinations of multimorbidity, each contributing a small fraction (maximum 3.2%) to current-year or 5-year secondary care costs. Highest total cost combinations tended to have fewer conditions (dyads/triads, most including hypertension) affecting a relatively large population. This contrasted with the combinations that generated the highest cost for individual patients, which were complex sets of many (6+) conditions affecting fewer persons. However, all combinations containing chronic kidney disease and hypertension, or diabetes and hypertension, made up a significant proportion of total secondary care costs, and all combinations containing chronic heart failure, chronic kidney disease, and hypertension had the highest proportion of preventable emergency admission costs, which might offer priority targets for prevention of disease accumulation. The results varied little between age and deprivation subgroups and sensitivity analyses. Key limitations include availability of data only from hospitals and reliance on hospital coding of health conditions.ConclusionsOur findings indicate that there are no clear multimorbidity combinations for a cluster-targeted intervention approach to reduce secondary care costs. The role of risk-stratification and focus on individual high-cost patients with interventions is particularly questionable for this aim. However, if aetiology is favourable for preventing further disease, the cluster approach might be useful for targeting disease prevention efforts with potential for cost-savings in secondary care.
| S-EPMC7815339 | biostudies-literature
Project description:We developed a digitally enabled care pathway for acute kidney injury (AKI) management incorporating a mobile detection application, specialist clinical response team and care protocol. Clinical outcome data were collected from adults with AKI on emergency admission before (May 2016 to January 2017) and after (May to September 2017) deployment at the intervention site and another not receiving the intervention. Changes in primary outcome (serum creatinine recovery to ≤120% baseline at hospital discharge) and secondary outcomes (30-day survival, renal replacement therapy, renal or intensive care unit (ICU) admission, worsening AKI stage and length of stay) were measured using interrupted time-series regression. Processes of care data (time to AKI recognition, time to treatment) were extracted from casenotes, and compared over two 9-month periods before and after implementation (January to September 2016 and 2017, respectively) using pre-post analysis. There was no step change in renal recovery or any of the secondary outcomes. Trends for creatinine recovery rates (estimated odds ratio (OR) = 1.04, 95% confidence interval (95% CI): 1.00-1.08, p = 0.038) and renal or ICU admission (OR = 0.95, 95% CI: 0.90-1.00, p = 0.044) improved significantly at the intervention site. However, difference-in-difference analyses between sites for creatinine recovery (estimated OR = 0.95, 95% CI: 0.90-1.00, p = 0.053) and renal or ICU admission (OR = 1.06, 95% CI: 0.98-1.16, p = 0.140) were not significant. Among process measures, time to AKI recognition and treatment of nephrotoxicity improved significantly (p < 0.001 and 0.047 respectively).
| S-EPMC6669220 | biostudies-literature
Project description:BackgroundPolicy-makers expect that integration of health and social care will improve user and carer experience and reduce avoidable hospital use. [We] evaluate the impact on emergency hospital admissions of two large nationally-initiated service integration programmes in England: the Pioneer (November 2013 to March 2018) and Vanguard (January 2015 to March 2018) programmes. The latter had far greater financial and expert support from central agencies.MethodsOf the 206 Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs) in England, 51(25%) were involved in the Pioneer programme only, 22(11%) were involved in the Vanguard programme only and 13(6%) were involved in both programmes. We used quasi-experimental methods to compare monthly counts of emergency admissions between four groups of CCGs, before and after the introduction of the two programmes.ResultsCCGs involved in the programmes had higher monthly hospital emergency admission rates than non-participants prior to their introduction [7.9 (95% CI:7.8-8.1) versus 7.5 (CI: 7.4-7.6) per 1000 population]. From 2013 to 2018, there was a 12% (95% CI:9.5-13.6%) increase in emergency admissions in CCGs not involved in either programme while emergency admissions in CCGs in the Pioneer and Vanguard programmes increased by 6.4% (95% CI: 3.8-9.0%) and 8.8% (95% CI:4.5-13.1%), respectively. CCGs involved in both initiatives experienced a smaller increase of 3.5% (95% CI:-0.3-7.2%). The slowdown largely occurred in the final year of both programmes.ConclusionsHealth and social care integration programmes can mitigate but not prevent rises in emergency admissions over the longer-term. Greater financial and expert support from national agencies and involvement in multiple integration initiatives can have cumulative effects.
| S-EPMC8274044 | biostudies-literature
Project description:ObjectiveAlthough 911 calls for acute shortness of breath are common, the role of emergency medical services (EMS) in acute asthma care is unclear. We sought to characterize the demographics, course, and outcomes of adult emergency department (ED) patients with asthma in the United States receiving initial EMS care.MethodsWe analyzed data from the 2016-2019 National Hospital Ambulatory Medical Care Survey (NHAMCS). We included patients aged ≥18 years with an ED visit diagnosis of asthma, stratifying the cases according to initial EMS care. Accounting for the survey design of NHAMCS, we generated nationalized estimates of the number of EMS and non-EMS asthma visits. Using logistic regression, we determined the associations between initial EMS care and patient demographics (age, sex, race, and insurance type), ED course (initial vital signs, triage category, testing, medications), and outcomes (hospital admission, ED length of stay).ResultsOf 435 million adult ED visits during 2016-2019, there were ≈5.3 million related to asthma (1.3 million annually, 1.2%; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.1%-1.4%). A total of 602,569 (150,642 annually, 11.3%; 95% CI, 8.6%-14.8%) ED patients with asthma received initial EMS care. Compared with non-EMS asthma patients, EMS asthma patients were more likely to present with an "urgent" ED triage category (odds ratio [OR], 22.2; 95% CI, 6.6-74.9) and to undergo laboratory (OR, 2.78; 95% CI, 1.41-5.46) or imaging tests (OR, 2.42; 95% CI, 1.21-4.83). ED patients with asthma receiving initial EMS care were almost 3 times more likely to be admitted to the hospital (OR, 2.81; 95% CI, 1.27-6.25). There were no differences in demographics, ED use of β-agonists or corticosteroids, or ED length of stay between EMS and non-EMS asthma patients.ConclusionsApproximately 1 in 10 adult ED patients with asthma receive initial care by EMS. EMS asthma patients present to the ED with higher acuity, undergo more diagnostic testing in the ED, and are more likely to be admitted. Although limited in information regarding the prehospital course, these findings highlight the more severe illness of asthma patients transported by EMS and underscore the importance of EMS in emergency asthma care.
| S-EPMC10436788 | biostudies-literature
Project description:ObjectiveAmbulatory care sensitive (ACS) conditions are those for which intensified primary care management could potentially prevent emergency admissions. This study aimed to quantify geographical variation in emergency admissions with ACS conditions in older adults and explore factors influencing variation.DesignRepeated cross-sectional study.Setting34 public hospitals in the Ireland.ParticipantsAdults aged ≥65 years hospitalised for seven ACS conditions between 2012 and 2016 (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, congestive heart failure (CHF), diabetes, angina, pyelonephritis/urinary tract infections (UTIs), dehydration and pneumonia).Primary outcome measureAge and sex standardised emergency admission rates (SARs) per 1000 older adults.AnalysisAge and sex SARs were calculated for 21 geographical areas. Extremal quotients and systematic components of variance (SCV) quantified variation. Spatial regression analyses was conducted for SARs with unemployment, urban population proportion, hospital turnover, supply of general practitioners (GPs), and supply of hospital-based specialists as explanatory variables.ResultsOver time, an increase in UTI/pyelonephritis SARs was seen while SARs for angina and CHF decreased. Geographic variation was moderate overall and high for dehydration and angina (SCV=11.7-50.0). For all conditions combined, multivariable analysis showed lower urban population (adjusted coefficient: -2.2 (-3.4 to -0.9, p<0.01)), lower GP supply (adjusted coefficient: -5.5 (-8.2 to -2.9, p<0.01)) and higher geriatrician supply (adjusted coefficient: 3.7 (0.5 to 6.9, p=0.02)) were associated with higher SARs.ConclusionsFuture research should evaluate methods of preventing admissions for ACS conditions among older adults, including how resources are allocated at a local level.
| S-EPMC8103372 | biostudies-literature
Project description:BACKGROUND: Despite advances in the treatment of childhood cancer, some children continue to die from their disease. This study aimed to assess the impact of specialist paediatric palliative care services (SPPCSs) on the number of hospital admissions in children who subsequently died from cancer in Yorkshire, UK. METHODS: An extract of patients aged 0-19 years from the Yorkshire Specialist Register of Cancer in Children and Young People (YSRCCYP) diagnosed from 1990 to 2009 were linked to inpatient hospital episodes data and a SPPCS database. Deaths were included if they occurred before 31 August 2011. Differences in hospital admission patterns were assessed using negative binomial regression and presented as incidence rate ratios (IRRs). RESULTS: Of 2508 children on the YSRCCYP, 657 (26%) had died by the censoring date. A total of 211 children had been referred to the local SPPCS, of whom 182 (86%) had subsequently died. Referral to SPPCS was associated with a significant reduction in the rate of planned hospital admissions (IRR=0.60, 95% CI 0.43-0.85). Central nervous system tumours showed significant decreases for all planned and emergency admissions compared with all other diagnostic groups. CONCLUSION: Referral to SPPCS significantly reduced the number of planned hospital admissions for children and young people with cancer before their death, which are often integral to paediatric oncology treatment regimens. Overall, our findings show that SPPCS have a role in reducing hospital admissions during end of life care of paediatric cancer patients with potential personal, social and economic benefits.
| S-EPMC3619259 | biostudies-other