Dataset Information

"Connecting the Dots": A Qualitative Study of Home Health Nurse Perspectives on Coordinating Care for Recently Discharged Patients.

ABSTRACT: BACKGROUND:In 2012, nearly one-third of adults 65 years or older with Medicare discharged to home after hospitalization were referred for home health care (HHC) services. Care coordination between the hospital and HHC is frequently inadequate and may contribute to medication errors and readmissions. Insights from HHC nurses could inform improvements to care coordination. OBJECTIVE:To describe HHC nurse perspectives about challenges and solutions to coordinating care for recently discharged patients. DESIGN/PARTICIPANTS:We conducted a descriptive qualitative study with six focus groups of HHC nurses and staff (n = 56) recruited from six agencies in Colorado. Focus groups were recorded, transcribed, and analyzed using a mixed deductive/inductive approach to theme analysis with a team-based iterative method. KEY RESULTS:HHC nurses described challenges and solutions within domains of Accountability, Communication, Assessing Needs & Goals, and Medication Management. One additional domain of Safety, for both patients and HHC nurses, emerged from the analysis. Within each domain, solutions for improving care coordination included the following: 1) Accountability-hospital physicians willing to manage HHC orders until primary care follow-up, potential legislation allowing physician assistants and nurse practitioners to write HHC orders; 2) Communication-enhanced access to hospital records and direct telephone lines for HHC; 3) Assessing Needs & Goals-liaisons from HHC agencies meeting with patients in hospital; 4) Medication Management-HHC coordinating directly with clinician or pharmacist to resolve discrepancies; and 5) Safety-HHC nurses contributing non-reimbursable services for patients, and ensuring that cognitive and behavioral health information is shared with HHC. CONCLUSIONS:In an era of shared accountability for patient outcomes across settings, solutions for improving care coordination with HHC are needed. Efforts to improve care coordination with HHC should focus on clearly defining accountability for orders, enhanced communication, improved alignment of expectations for HHC between clinicians and patients, a focus on reducing medication discrepancies, and prioritizing safety for both patients and HHC nurses.

SUBMITTER: Jones CD

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5602761 | biostudies-other | 2017 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-other

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"Connecting the Dots": A Qualitative Study of Home Health Nurse Perspectives on Coordinating Care for Recently Discharged Patients.

Jones Christine D CD Jones Jacqueline J Richard Angela A Bowles Kathryn K Lahoff Dana D Boxer Rebecca S RS Masoudi Frederick A FA Coleman Eric A EA Wald Heidi L HL

Journal of general internal medicine 20170713 10

<h4>Background</h4>In 2012, nearly one-third of adults 65 years or older with Medicare discharged to home after hospitalization were referred for home health care (HHC) services. Care coordination between the hospital and HHC is frequently inadequate and may contribute to medication errors and readmissions. Insights from HHC nurses could inform improvements to care coordination.<h4>Objective</h4>To describe HHC nurse perspectives about challenges and solutions to coordinating care for recently d ...[more]

PMID: 28707258

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Project description:BackgroundPerinatal care nurses are well positioned to provide the education and support new fathers need to navigate the transition to fatherhood and to encourage positive father involvement from the earliest hours of a child's life. To effectively serve fathers in perinatal settings, it is important to understand the attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors of healthcare providers that may encourage and engage them, or alternatively alienate and discourage them.MethodsThis qualitative study involved structured interviews with ten NICU and postpartum nurses from hospitals in two large Texas cities. The interview protocol was designed to elicit descriptive information about nurses' attitudes and beliefs, sense of efficacy and intention for working with fathers, as well as their father-directed behaviors. Nurses were recruited for the study using a purposive sampling approach. Interviews were conducted by telephone and lasted approximately 25 to 35 min. Data were analyzed using a qualitative descriptive approach.ResultsOverall, study participants held very positive subjective attitudes toward fathers and father involvement. Nevertheless, many of the nurses signaled normative beliefs based on race/ethnicity, gender, and culture that may moderate their intention to engage with fathers. Participants also indicated that their education as well as the culture of perinatal healthcare are focused almost entirely on the mother-baby dyad. In line with this focus on mothers, participants comments reflected a normative belief that fathers are secondary caregivers to their newborns, there to help when the mother is unavailable.ConclusionsNurse attitudes and practices that place mothers in the role of primary caregiver may be interpreted by fathers as excluding or disregarding them. Further research is needed to validate the results of this small-scale study, and to assess whether and how provider attitudes impact their practices in educating and engaging fathers in newborn care.

Project description:BACKGROUND:Differentiated models of care (DMOC) are used to make antiretroviral therapy (ART) accessible to people living with HIV (PLHIV). In Malawi, Lighthouse Trust has piloted various DMOCs aimed at providing quality care while reducing personal and logistical barriers when accessing clinic-based healthcare. One of the approaches was community-based provision of ART by nurses to stable patients. METHODS:To explore how the nurse-led community ART programme (NCAP) is perceived, we interviewed eighteen purposively selected patients receiving ART through NCAP and the four nurses providing the community-based health care. Information obtained from them was complemented with observations by the study team. Interviews were recorded and transcribed. Data was analysed using manual coding and thematic analysis. RESULTS:Through the NCAP, patients were able to save money on transportation and the time it took them to travel to a health facility. Caseloads and waiting times were also reduced, which made patients more comfortable and gave nurses the time to conduct thorough consultations. Closer relationships were built between patients and care providers, creating a space for more open conversations (although this required care providers to set clear boundaries and stick to schedule). Patients' nutritional needs and concerns related to stigma remain a concern, while operational issues affect the quality of the services provided in the community. Considerations for community-led healthcare programmes include the provision of transportation for care providers; the physical structure of community sites (in regard to private spaces); the timely consolidation of data collected in the field to a central database; and the need for care providers to cover multiple facility-based staff roles. CONCLUSIONS:The patients interviewed in this study preferred the NCAP approach to the facility-based model of care because it saved them money on transport, reduced waiting-times, and allowed for a more thorough consultation, while continuing to provide quality HIV care. However, when considering a community-level DMOC approach, certain factors - including staff transportation and workload - must be taken into consideration and purposefully planned.

Project description:Current efforts to improve health care focus on hospital readmission rates as a marker of quality and on the effectiveness of transitions in care during the period after acute care is received. Emergency department (ED) visits are also a marker of hospital-based acute care following discharge but little is known about ED use during this period.To determine the degree to which ED visits and hospital readmissions contribute to overall use of acute care services within 30 days of discharge from acute care hospitals, to describe the reasons patients return for ED visits, and to describe these patterns among Medicare beneficiaries and those not covered by Medicare insurance.Prospective study of patients aged 18 years or older (mean age: 53.4 years) who were discharged between July 1, 2008, and September 31, 2009, from acute care hospitals in 3 large, geographically diverse states (California, Florida, and Nebraska) with data recorded in the Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project state inpatient and ED databases.The 3 primary outcomes during the 30-day period after hospital discharge were ED visits not resulting in admission (treat-and-release encounters), hospital readmissions from any source, and a combined measure of ED visits and hospital readmissions termed hospital-based acute care.The final cohort included 5,032,254 index hospitalizations among 4,028,555 unique patients. In the 30 days following discharge, 17.9% (95% CI, 17.9%-18.0%) of hospitalizations resulted in at least 1 acute care encounter. Of these 1,233,402 postdischarge acute care encounters, ED visits comprised 39.8% (95% CI, 39.7%-39.9%). For every 1000 discharges, there were 97.5 (95% CI, 97.2-97.8) ED treat-and-release visits and 147.6 (95% CI, 147.3-147.9) hospital readmissions in the 30 days following discharge. The number of ED treat-and-release visits ranged from a low of 22.4 (95% CI, 4.6-65.4) encounters per 1000 discharges for breast malignancy to a high of 282.5 (95% CI, 209.7-372.4) encounters per 1000 discharges for uncomplicated benign prostatic hypertrophy. Among the highest volume discharges, the most common reason patients returned to the ED was always related to their index hospitalization.After discharge from acute care hospitals in 3 states, ED visits within 30 days were common among adults and accounted for 39.8% of postdischarge hospital-based acute care visits. Improving care transitions should focus not only on decreasing readmissions but also on ED visits.

Dataset Information

"Connecting the Dots": A Qualitative Study of Home Health Nurse Perspectives on Coordinating Care for Recently Discharged Patients.

Publications

"Connecting the Dots": A Qualitative Study of Home Health Nurse Perspectives on Coordinating Care for Recently Discharged Patients.

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