Study of Physician Awareness of and Communication About Patient Readmissions to the Hospital

This study is currently recruiting participants.

Verified by Brigham and Women's Hospital, October 2007

Sponsors and Collaborators:	Brigham and Women's Hospital Harvard Risk Management Foundation
Information provided by:	Brigham and Women's Hospital
ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier:	NCT00550264

Purpose

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.

Condition	Intervention
Hospital Readmission	Other: Automatic notification of readmissions

U.S. FDA Resources

Study Type:	Interventional
Study Design:	Randomized, Open Label, Active Control, Single Group Assignment
Official Title:	Physician Awareness of and Communication About Hospital Readmissions

Further study details as provided by Brigham and Women's Hospital:

Primary Outcome Measures:

Physician Awareness and Communication Rates

Estimated Enrollment:	500
Study Start Date:	February 2007
Estimated Study Completion Date:	December 2007

Arms	Assigned Interventions
1: Experimental	Other: Automatic 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.
2: No Intervention

Eligibility

Ages Eligible for Study:	18 Years and older
Genders Eligible for Study:	Both
Accepts Healthy Volunteers:	No

Criteria

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

Contacts and Locations

Please refer to this study by its ClinicalTrials.gov identifier: NCT00550264

Contacts

Contact: Christopher L Roy, MD

617-278-0591

croy@partners.org

Locations

United States, Massachusetts
Brigham & Women's Hospital	Recruiting
Boston, Massachusetts, United States, 02115

Sponsors and Collaborators

Brigham and Women's Hospital

Harvard Risk Management Foundation

Investigators

Principal Investigator:

Christopher L Roy, MD

Brigham and Women's Hospital

More Information

Study ID Numbers:	2006P001975; BWH
Study First Received:	October 25, 2007
Last Updated:	October 25, 2007
ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier:	NCT00550264
Health Authority:	United States: Institutional Review Board

Keywords provided by Brigham and Women's Hospital:

Hospital Readmission
Continuity of Care
Quality of Health Care

ClinicalTrials.gov processed this record on January 15, 2009