School of Medicine and Health Sciences Poster Presentations

Improving Post-Hospital Transitions of Care by Facilitating Follow-Up Appointment Creation

Poster Number

305

Document Type

Poster

Publication Date

3-2016

Abstract

Background: Transitions of care are important to patient safety and care. They are a known period of risk and often patients can suffer an adverse event, resulting in hospital readmissions. Within the George Washington University Hospital, data has shown that over 50% of patients admitted to the internal medicine wards that are readmitted within 1 month do not have a follow-up appointment scheduled prior to initial discharge. A study at the University of Colorado Hospital showed that patients lacking timely follow-up after an inpatient stay were ten times more likely to be readmitted. Our project aims to improve the rate of follow-up appointments made and documented by 25%.

Methods: Baseline data was collected in December 2015 from four internal medicine wards teams tracking the number of daily patient discharges, follow-up appointments, and time to follow-up appointment from discharge. Our intervention was to provide all internal medicine wards team members with local clinics’ contact information. Data was again collected after the intervention as a comparison.

Results: Baseline data identified 50 patients that were discharged from medicine teams. Average length of stay was 13.5 days. 19 patients (38%) had follow-up appointments made at time of discharge. Average time from discharge to appointment date was 15 days. After the intervention, 58 patients were discharged from medicine teams. Average length of stay was 4.8 days. 36 patients (62%) had follow-up appointments made at time of discharge. Average time of discharge to appointment date was 8 days.

Conclusions: By providing internal medicine residents with contact information for local clinics, we were able to increase the percentage of patients who have appointments made at time of discharge by 24%. Results also show a decrease in the average time from discharge to appointment date, indicating timelier follow-up. The next steps will be to determine if this correlates to a reduction in readmission rates, which are costly to both the hospital and the patient.

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Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.

Open Access

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Presented at: GW Research Days 2016

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Improving Post-Hospital Transitions of Care by Facilitating Follow-Up Appointment Creation

Background: Transitions of care are important to patient safety and care. They are a known period of risk and often patients can suffer an adverse event, resulting in hospital readmissions. Within the George Washington University Hospital, data has shown that over 50% of patients admitted to the internal medicine wards that are readmitted within 1 month do not have a follow-up appointment scheduled prior to initial discharge. A study at the University of Colorado Hospital showed that patients lacking timely follow-up after an inpatient stay were ten times more likely to be readmitted. Our project aims to improve the rate of follow-up appointments made and documented by 25%.

Methods: Baseline data was collected in December 2015 from four internal medicine wards teams tracking the number of daily patient discharges, follow-up appointments, and time to follow-up appointment from discharge. Our intervention was to provide all internal medicine wards team members with local clinics’ contact information. Data was again collected after the intervention as a comparison.

Results: Baseline data identified 50 patients that were discharged from medicine teams. Average length of stay was 13.5 days. 19 patients (38%) had follow-up appointments made at time of discharge. Average time from discharge to appointment date was 15 days. After the intervention, 58 patients were discharged from medicine teams. Average length of stay was 4.8 days. 36 patients (62%) had follow-up appointments made at time of discharge. Average time of discharge to appointment date was 8 days.

Conclusions: By providing internal medicine residents with contact information for local clinics, we were able to increase the percentage of patients who have appointments made at time of discharge by 24%. Results also show a decrease in the average time from discharge to appointment date, indicating timelier follow-up. The next steps will be to determine if this correlates to a reduction in readmission rates, which are costly to both the hospital and the patient.