Hospital Readmission
Conditions
Keywords
Hospital Readmission, Continuity of Care, Quality of Health Care
Brief summary
Patients admitted to inpatient medicine services often require early hospital readmission, and often they are readmitted to different physician or team, potentially without the knowledge of the prior physician or team. Thus, physicians may lose the opportunity to share valuable information about readmitted patients, which may be detrimental to continuity of care and patient safety. The purpose of this study is to determine baseline awareness and communication rates among physicians regarding readmissions, and then measure the effect of automatic notification on these rates.
Interventions
OTHERAutomatic notification of readmissions
The experimental group physicians will receive automatic e-mail notification when a patient is readmitted, including contact information for the readmitting team.
Sponsors
Harvard Risk Management Foundation
Brigham and Women's Hospital
Study design
Allocation
RANDOMIZED
Intervention model
SINGLE_GROUP
Masking
NONE
Eligibility
Sex/Gender
ALL
Age
18 Years to No maximum
Healthy volunteers
No
Inclusion criteria
* All patients admitted to the general medicine service at two academic medical centers, and unexpectedly readmitted within 14 days.
Exclusion criteria
* Patients readmitted to the same physician(s), or those whose readmission was planned
Design outcomes
Primary
| Measure | Time frame |
|---|---|
| Physician Awareness and Communication Rates | Within 24 hours of readmission time |
Countries
United States
Outcome results
None listed