Health Optimization Program for Elders: Improving the Transition From Hospital to Skilled Nursing Facility.

BACKGROUND: Individuals discharged from the hospital to skilled nursing facilities (SNFs) experience high rates of unplanned hospital readmission, indicating opportunity for improvement in transitional care. LOCAL PROBLEM: Local physicians providing care in SNFs were not associated with the discharging hospital health care system. As a result, substantive real-time communication between hospital and SNF physicians was not occurring. METHODS: A multidisciplinary team developed and monitored implementation of the Health Optimization Program for Elders (HOPE) to improve patient transitions from acute hospital stay to SNFs. INTERVENTIONS: The HOPE used a nurse practitioner (NP) to identify geriatric syndromes, set patient/caregiver expectations, assess rehabilitation potential, clarify goals of care, and communicate information directly to SNF providers. RESULTS: The intervention was feasible, addressed unmet needs and errors in the SNF transition process, and was associated with lower 30-day readmission rates compared with concurrent patients not enrolled in the HOPE. CONCLUSIONS: An NP-led hospital to SNF transitional care program is a promising means of improving hospital to SNF transitions.

Impact of geographical cohorting, multidisciplinary rounding and incremental case management support on hospital length of stay and readmission rates: a propensity weighted analysis.

Hospital length of stay (LOS) in the USA has been increasing since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, with numerous negative outcomes, including decreased quality of care, worsened patient satisfaction and negative financial impacts on hospitals. While many proposed factors contributing to prolonged LOS are challenging to modify, poor coordination of care and communication among clinical teams can be improved.Geographical cohorting of provider teams, patients and other clinical staff is proposed as a solution to prolonged LOS and readmissions. However, many studies on geographical cohorting alone have shown no significant impact on LOS or readmissions. Other potential benefits of geographical cohorting include improved quality of care, learning experience, communication, teamwork and efficiency.This paper presents a retrospective study at Duke University Hospital (DUH) on the General Medicine service, deploying a bundled intervention of geographical cohorting of patients and their care teams, twice daily multidisciplinary rounds and incremental case management support. The quality improvement study found that patients in the intervention arm had 16%-17% shorter LOS than those in the control arms, and there was a reduction in 30-day hospital readmissions compared with the concurrent control arm. Moreover, there was some evidence of improved accuracy of estimated discharge dates in the intervention arm.Based on these findings, the health system at DUH recognised the value of geographical cohorting and implemented additional geographically based medicine units with multidisciplinary rounds. Future studies will confirm the sustained impact of these care transformations on hospital throughput and patient outcomes, aiming to reduce LOS and enhance the quality of care provided to patients.

Implementation of a telehealth videoconference to improve hospital-to-skilled nursing care transitions: Preliminary data.

BACKGROUND: Transition-related patient safety errors are high among patients discharged from hospitals to skilled nursing facilities (SNFs), and interventions are needed to improve communication between hospitals and SNF providers. Our objective was to describe the implementation of a pilot telehealth videoconference program modeled after Extension for Community Health Outcomes-Care Transitions and examine patient safety errors and readmissions. METHODS: A multidisciplinary telehealth videoconference program was implemented at two academic hospitals for patients discharged to participating SNFs. Process measures, patient safety errors, and hospital readmissions were evaluated retrospectively for patients discussed at weekly conferences between July 2019-January 2020. Results were mapped to the constructs of the Reach, Effectiveness, Adoption, Implementation, Maintenance (RE-AIM) model. Descriptive statistics were reported for the conference process measures, patient and index hospitalization characteristics, and patient safety errors. The primary clinical outcome was all-cause 30-day readmissions. An intention-to-treat (ITT) analysis was conducted using logistic regression models fit to compare the probability of 30-day hospital readmission in patients discharged to participating SNFs across 7 months prior to after telehealth project implementation. RESULTS: There were 263 patients (67% of eligible patients) discussed during 26 telehealth videoconferences. Mean discussion time per patient was 7.7 min and median prep time per patient was 24.2 min for the hospital pharmacist and 10.3 min for the hospital clinician. A total of 327 patient safety errors were uncovered, mostly related to communication (54%) and medications (43%). Differences in slopes (program period vs. pre-implementation) of the probability of readmission across the two time periods were not statistically significant (OR 0.95, [95% CI 0.75, 1.19]). CONCLUSIONS: A pilot care innovations telehealth videoconference between hospital-based and SNF provider teams was successfully implemented within a large health system and enhanced care transitions by optimizing error-prone transitions. Future work is needed to understand process flow within nursing homes and its impact on clinical outcomes.

Translating genomics into clinical practice: applications in lung cancer.

Non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) is the leading cause of death from cancer worldwide and has a poor overall survival across all stages of disease. The recent advancement of gene expression technology addresses the phenotypic complexity of many diseases, including NSCLC. These genomic approaches have shown great promise in NSCLC in helping to improve risk stratification, prognosis, and the clinician's ability to match the right therapy to an individual patient. Large prospective clinical trials are under way to evaluate the application and clinical impact of the use of genomics-based predictors of prognosis and therapy compared with current standard-of-care methods in patients with NSCLC. Several challenges of genomics-based therapy must be addressed before widespread application of these techniques becomes a reality. Genomic approaches in NSCLC have the potential to advance our understanding of underlying disease biology, to improve current prognostic and treatment paradigms, and to identify new targets for treatment, ultimately improving survival in patients with NSCLC and providing an opportunity for "personalized medicine."