Using Intern-Led Quality Improvement to Reduce Readmissions for Specialty Service Patients Within an Academic Medical Center
| Autor: | Jeannette Hester, Andressa A. Sleiman, Anu Vats, Jacqueline Baron-Lee, Brian Tran, Omri Chia, Katharina M. Busl, Alfeil Felipe, Daniel J. Hoh, Miis Akel |
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| Rok vydání: | 2021 |
| Předmět: |
Service (business)
Quality management business.industry Specialty Quality Improvement Projects medicine.disease 03 medical and health sciences 0302 clinical medicine Medicine Center (algebra and category theory) 030212 general & internal medicine Medical emergency business 030217 neurology & neurosurgery |
| Zdroj: | Glob J Qual Saf Healthc |
| ISSN: | 2589-9449 2666-2353 |
| DOI: | 10.36401/jqsh-20-38 |
| Popis: | Introduction Postdischarge patient calls are an effective intervention to decrease unplanned readmissions. Despite its efficacy, calls are time consuming and compete with other clinical obligations. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the viability of intern-led quality improvement (QI) on conducting initial postdischarge calls to filter patients who require clinical or nurse follow-up. Methods QI interns from an academic medical center's QI program completed postdischarge patient calls within 72 hours of patient discharge from a neurosurgery service between June 2018 and July 2019. QI interns filtered patients who required follow-up calls from a clinical service or nurse department. The departments called patients within 48 hours of requests. Unplanned readmission rate was compared between the cohort of patients who requested and received a follow-up call versus a cohort of patients who requested and did not receive a follow-up call (control). Results QI interns completed 83.8% postdischarge patient calls within 72 hours of discharge. Reasons for unsuccessful calls included patient unresponsiveness (74.6%), wrong phone number on file (13.9%), and request to be called at a different time (11.5%). Nurses completed 57.2% follow-up requests within the targeted 48 hours and completed remaining requests within 7 days. QI intern postdischarge follow-up calls, in conjunction with nurse follow-up intervention, showed a significant (risk ratio = −3.31, p = 0.012) preventive effect on unplanned readmission rate. Conclusions QI interns are a viable alternative to nurses to conduct the first contact of postdischarge patient follow-up calls. This system of QI interns filtering calls to the correct clinical service or nurse department increased postdischarge patient follow-up calls success rate and decreased readmission rates. |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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