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

June 27, 2011 updated by: Brigham and Women's Hospital

Physician Awareness of and Communication About Hospital Readmissions

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.

Study Overview

Status

Completed

Conditions

Intervention / Treatment

Study Type

Interventional

Enrollment (Anticipated)

500

Phase

  • Not Applicable

Contacts and Locations

This section provides the contact details for those conducting the study, and information on where this study is being conducted.

Study Locations

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

Participation Criteria

Researchers look for people who fit a certain description, called eligibility criteria. Some examples of these criteria are a person's general health condition or prior treatments.

Eligibility Criteria

Ages Eligible for Study

18 years and older (Adult, Older Adult)

Accepts Healthy Volunteers

No

Genders Eligible for Study

All

Description

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

Study Plan

This section provides details of the study plan, including how the study is designed and what the study is measuring.

How is the study designed?

Design Details

  • Allocation: Randomized
  • Interventional Model: Single Group Assignment
  • Masking: None (Open Label)

Arms and Interventions

Participant Group / Arm
Intervention / Treatment
Experimental: 1
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.
No Intervention: 2

What is the study measuring?

Primary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure
Time Frame
Physician Awareness and Communication Rates
Time Frame: Within 24 hours of readmission time
Within 24 hours of readmission time

Collaborators and Investigators

This is where you will find people and organizations involved with this study.

Sponsor

Brigham and Women's Hospital

Collaborators

Harvard Risk Management Foundation

Investigators

  • Principal Investigator: Christopher L Roy, MD, Brigham and Women's Hospital

Publications and helpful links

The person responsible for entering information about the study voluntarily provides these publications. These may be about anything related to the study.

General Publications

Study record dates

These dates track the progress of study record and summary results submissions to ClinicalTrials.gov. Study records and reported results are reviewed by the National Library of Medicine (NLM) to make sure they meet specific quality control standards before being posted on the public website.

Study Major Dates

Study Start

February 1, 2007

Primary Completion (Actual)

January 1, 2008

Study Completion (Actual)

January 1, 2008

Study Registration Dates

First Submitted

October 25, 2007

First Submitted That Met QC Criteria

October 25, 2007

First Posted (Estimate)

October 29, 2007

Study Record Updates

Last Update Posted (Estimate)

June 28, 2011

Last Update Submitted That Met QC Criteria

June 27, 2011

Last Verified

June 1, 2011

More Information

Terms related to this study

Keywords

Other Study ID Numbers

  • 2006P001975; BWH

This information was retrieved directly from the website clinicaltrials.gov without any changes. If you have any requests to change, remove or update your study details, please contact register@clinicaltrials.gov. As soon as a change is implemented on clinicaltrials.gov, this will be updated automatically on our website as well.

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