Evaluation of Telehealth Visit Attendance After Implementation of a Patient Navigator Program.

Importance: The dramatic rise in use of telehealth accelerated by COVID-19 created new telehealth-specific challenges as patients and clinicians adapted to technical aspects of video visits. Objective: To evaluate a telehealth patient navigator pilot program to assist patients in overcoming barriers to video visit access. Design, Setting, and Participants: This quality improvement study investigated visit attendance outcomes among those who received navigator outreach (intervention group) compared with those who did not (comparator group) at 2 US academic primary care clinics during a 12-week study period from April to July 2021. Eligible participants had a scheduled video visit without previous successful telehealth visits. Interventions: The navigator contacted patients with next-day scheduled video appointments by phone to offer technical assistance and answer questions on accessing the appointment. Main Outcomes and Measures: The primary outcome was appointment attendance following the intervention. Return on investment (ROI) accounting for increased clinic adherence and costs of implementation was examined as a secondary outcome. Results: A total 4066 patients had video appointments scheduled (2553 [62.8%] women; median [IQR] age: intervention, 55 years [38-66 years] vs comparator, 52 years [36-66 years]; P = .02). Patients who received the navigator intervention had significantly increased odds of attending their appointments (odds ratio, 2.0; 95% CI, 1.6-2.6) when compared with the comparator group, with an absolute increase of 9% in appointment attendance for the navigator group (949 of 1035 patients [91.6%] vs 2511 of 3031 patients [82.8%]). The program's ROI was $11 387 over the 12-week period. Conclusions and Relevance: In this quality improvement study, we found that a telehealth navigator program was associated with significant improvement in video visit adherence with a net financial gain. Our findings have relevance for efforts to reduce barriers to telehealth-based health care and increase equity.

Development of a framework to describe patient and family harm from disrespect and promote improvements in quality and safety: a scoping review.

PURPOSE: Patients and families may experience 'non-physical' harm from interactions with the healthcare system, including emotional, psychological, socio-behavioral or financial harm, some of which may be related to experiences of disrespect. We sought to use the current literature to develop a practical, improvement-oriented framework to recognize, describe and help prevent such events. DATA SOURCES: Searches were performed in PubMed, Embase, PsychINFO, CINAHL, Health Business Elite and ProQuest Dissertations & Theses: Global: Health & Medicine, from their inception through July 2017. STUDY SELECTION: Two authors reviewed titles, abstracts, full texts, references and cited-by lists to identify articles describing approaches to understanding patient/family experiences of disrespect. DATA EXTRACTION: Findings were evaluated using integrative review methodology. RESULTS OF DATA SYNTHESIS: Three-thousand eight hundred and eighty two abstracts were reviewed. Twenty three articles were identified. Components of experiences of disrespect included: (1) numerous care processes; (2) a wide range of healthcare professional and organizational behaviors; (3) contributing factors, including patient- and professional-related factors, the environment of work and care, leadership, policies, processes and culture; (4) important consequences of disrespect, including behavioral changes and health impacts on patients and families, negative effects on professionals' subsequent interactions, and patient attrition from organizations and (5) factors both intrinsic and extrinsic to patients that can modify the consequences of disrespect. CONCLUSION: A generalizable framework for understanding disrespect experienced by patients/families in healthcare may help organizations better prevent non-physical harms. Future work should prospectively test and refine the framework we described so as to facilitate its integration into organizations' existing operational systems.

A Road Map for Advancing the Practice of Respect in Health Care: The Results of an Interdisciplinary Modified Delphi Consensus Study.

BACKGROUND: Most health care organizations' efforts to reduce harm focus on physical harm, but other forms of harm are both prevalent and important. These "nonphysical" harms can be framed using the concepts of respect and dignity: Disrespect is an affront to dignity and can cause harm. Organizations should strive to eliminate disrespect to patients, to families, and among health care professionals. METHODS: A diverse, interdisciplinary panel of experts was convened to discuss strategies to guide health care systems to embrace an expanded definition of patient harm that includes nonphysical harm. Subsequently, using a modified Delphi process, a guide was developed for health care professionals and organizations to improve the practice of respect across the continuum of care. RESULTS: Five rounds of surveys were required to reach predefined metrics of consensus. Delphi participants identified a total of 25 strategies associated with six high-level recommendations: "Leaders must champion a culture of respect and dignity"; with other professionals sharing the responsibility to "Promote accountability"; "Engage and support the health care workforce"; "Partner with patients and families"; "Establish systems to learn about and improve the practice of respect"; and "Expand the research agenda and measurement tools, and disseminate what is learned." CONCLUSION: Harm from disrespect is the next frontier in preventable harm. This consensus statement provides a road map for health care organizations and professionals interested in engaging in a reliable practice of respect. Further work is needed to develop the specific tactics that will lead health care organizations to prevent harm from disrespect.

Hospitalized patients' participation and its impact on quality of care and patient safety.

OBJECTIVE: To understand the extent to which hospitalized patients participate in their care, and the association of patient participation with quality of care and patient safety. DESIGN: Random sample telephone survey and medical record review. SETTING: US acute care hospitals in 2003. PARTICIPANTS: A total of 2025 recently hospitalized adults. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Hospitalized patients reported participation in their own care, assessments of overall quality of care and the presence of adverse events (AEs) in telephone interviews. Physician reviewers rated the severity and preventability of AEs identified by interview and chart review among 788 surveyed patients who also consented to medical record review. RESULTS: Of the 2025 patients surveyed, 99.9% of patients reported positive responses to at least one of seven measures of participation. High participation (use of >4 activities) was strongly associated with patients' favorable ratings of the hospital quality of care (adjusted OR: 5.46, 95% CI: 4.15-7.19). Among the 788 patients with both patient survey and chart review data, there was an inverse relationship between participation and adverse events. In multivariable logistic regression analyses, patients with high participation were half as likely to have at least one adverse event during the admission (adjusted OR = 0.49, 0.31-0.78). CONCLUSIONS: Most hospitalized patients participated in some aspects of their care. Participation was strongly associated with favorable judgments about hospital quality and reduced the risk of experiencing an adverse event.

Expert panel on weight loss surgery: executive report update.

Rapid shifts in the demographics and techniques of weight loss surgery (WLS) have led to new issues, new data, new concerns, and new challenges. In 2004, this journal published comprehensive evidence-based guidelines on WLS. In this issue, we've updated those guidelines to assure patient safety in this fast-changing field. WLS involves a uniquely vulnerable population in need of specialized resources and ongoing multidisciplinary care. Timely best-practice updates are required to identify new risks, develop strategies to address them, and optimize treatment. Findings in these reports are based on a comprehensive review of the most current literature on WLS; they directly link patient safety to methods for setting evidence-based guidelines developed from peer-reviewed scientific publications. Among other outcomes, these reports show that WLS reduces chronic disease risk factors, improves health, and confers a survival benefit on those who undergo it. The literature also shows that laparoscopy has displaced open surgery as the predominant approach; that government agencies and insurers only reimburse procedures performed at accredited WLS centers; that best practice care requires close collaboration between members of a multidisciplinary team; and that new and existing facilities require wide-ranging changes to accommodate growing numbers of severely obese patients. More than 100 specialists from across the state of Massachusetts and across the many disciplines involved in WLS came together to develop these new standards. We expect them to have far-reaching effects of the development of health care policy and the practice of WLS.

Adverse events during hospitalization: results of a patient survey.

BACKGROUND: A two-stage probability sample of patients recently discharged from 16 general acute care hospitals in Massachusetts were interviewed to determine the rates at which patients experience what they considered to be adverse events, to describe the kinds of events they reported, and to identify the correlates of those reports. METHODS: Eligible respondents were adults, 18 years of age or older, who were medical or surgical patients overnight or longer between April 1 and October 1, 2003, and who were discharged to their homes in Massachusetts. Questions covered perceptions of adverse events during hospitalizations and possible correlates of those events. Telephone interviews were carried out an average of nine months after discharge with 2,582 patients (response rate, 53%-60%). RESULTS: Twenty-nine percent of respondents reported at least one unexpected "negative" event during their hospitalization. After physician review, the revised estimate was that 25% perceived that they had experienced at least one event that met our definition for an adverse event. The most common reported events were reactions to newly prescribed drugs (40%) and the effects of surgery (34%). Physician reviewers coded 57% of the adverse events as "significant" and 18% as "serious" or "life-threatening." The physician reviewers also rated 31% of the reported adverse events as likely to be preventable. DISCUSSION: The estimate that one in four hospital patients experienced an adverse event is considerably higher than the published rates based on hospital record review, indicating the potential value of surveys for studies of patient safety. Because of nonresponse among older patients, that estimate is probably an underestimate. Designs that would reduce lags between discharge and interviews and decrease hospital nonresponses would reduce two key threats to confidence in the survey results.

Comparing patient-reported hospital adverse events with medical record review: do patients know something that hospitals do not?

BACKGROUND: Hospitals routinely survey patients about the quality of care they receive, but little is known about whether patient interviews can detect adverse events that medical record reviews do not. OBJECTIVE: To compare adverse events reported in postdischarge patient interviews with adverse events detected by medical record review. DESIGN: Random sample survey. SETTING: Massachusetts, 2003. PATIENTS: Recently hospitalized adults. MEASUREMENTS: By using parallel methods, physicians reviewed postdischarge interviews and medical records to classify hospital adverse events. RESULTS: Among 998 study patients, 23% had at least 1 adverse event detected by an interview and 11% had at least 1 adverse event identified by record review. The kappa statistic showed relatively poor agreement between interviews and medical records for occurrence of any type of adverse event (kappa = 0.20 [95% CI, 0.03 to 0.27]) and somewhat better agreement between interviews and medical records for life-threatening or serious events (kappa = 0.33 [CI, 0.20 to 0.45]). Record review identified 11 serious, preventable events (1.1% of patients). Interviews identified an additional 21 serious and preventable events that were not documented in the medical record, including 12 predischarge events and 9 postdischarge events, in which symptoms occurred after the patient left the hospital. LIMITATIONS: Patients had to be healthy enough to be interviewed. Delay in reaching patients (6 to 12 months after discharge) may have resulted in poor recall of events during the hospital stay. CONCLUSION: Patients report many events that are not documented in the medical record; some are serious and preventable. Hospitals should consider monitoring patient safety by adding questions about adverse events to postdischarge interviews.

Reconciling medications at admission: safe practice recommendations and implementation strategies.

BACKGROUND: Fifty hospitals collaborated in a patient safety initiative developed and implemented by the Massachusetts Coalition for the Prevention of Medical Errors and the Massachusetts Hospital Association. METHODS: A consensus group identified safe practices and suggested implementation strategies. Four collaborative learning sessions were offered, and teams monitored their progress and shared successful strategies and lessons learned. Reports from participating teams and an evaluation survey were then used to identify successful techniques for reconciling medications. RESULTS: For the 50 participating hospitals, implementation strategies most strongly correlated with success included active physician and nursing engagement, having an effective improvement team, using small tests of change, having an actively engaged senior administrator, and sending a team to multiple collaborative sessions. DISCUSSION: Adoption of the reconciling safe practices proved challenging. The process of writing medication orders at patient transfer points is complex. The hospitals' experiences demonstrated that implementing the proposed safe practices requires a team effort with leadership support and vigilant measurement.

Error reporting and disclosure systems: views from hospital leaders.

CONTEXT: The Institute of Medicine has recommended establishing mandatory error reporting systems for hospitals and other health settings. OBJECTIVE: To examine the opinions and experiences of hospital leaders with state reporting systems. DESIGN AND SETTING: Survey of chief executive and chief operating officers (CEOs/COOs) from randomly selected hospitals in 2 states with mandatory reporting and public disclosure, 2 states with mandatory reporting without public disclosure, and 2 states without mandatory systems in 2002-2003. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Perceptions of the effects of mandatory systems on error reporting, likelihood of lawsuits, and overall patient safety; attitudes regarding release of incident reports to the public; and likelihood of reporting incidents to the state or to the affected patient based on hypothetical clinical vignettes that varied the type and severity of patient injury. RESULTS: Responses were received from 203 of 320 hospitals (response rate = 63%). Most CEOs/COOs thought that a mandatory, nonconfidential system would discourage reporting of patient safety incidents to their hospital's own internal reporting system (69%) and encourage lawsuits (79%) while having no effect or a negative effect on patient safety (73%). More than 80% felt that the names of both the hospital and the involved professionals should be kept confidential, although respondents from states with mandatory public disclosure systems were more willing than respondents from the other states to release the hospital name (22% vs 4%-6%, P = .005). Based on the vignettes, more than 90% of hospital leaders said their hospital would report incidents involving serious injury to the state, but far fewer would report moderate or minor injuries, even when the incident was of sufficient consequence that they would tell the affected patient or family. CONCLUSIONS: Most hospital leaders expressed substantial concerns about the impact of mandatory, nonconfidential reporting systems on hospital internal reporting, lawsuits, and overall patient safety. While hospital leaders generally favor disclosure of patient safety incidents to involved patients, fewer would disclose incidents involving moderate or minor injury to state reporting systems.