The Western Norway Mental Health Interface Study on Referral Letters

February 11, 2020 updated by: Miriam Hartveit, Helse Fonna

Interface Between Primary Care and Specialist Mental Health Care - the Referral Letters

The main object to this trial is to study the function of referral letters as a mean to coordinate the care process for adult people when referred from Primary Care to Specialised Mental Health Care. The study will explore if and to what degree the quality of these referral letters can be improved, and the potential improvement's impact on defined patient-, professional and organisational related outcomes. According to Medical Research Council guidelines for evaluating complex interventions, a stepwise design with the use of both qualitative and quantitative methods will be used to conduct a controlled intervention study.

Study Overview

Status

Withdrawn

Conditions

Intervention / Treatment

Detailed Description

The study is based on a stepwise progression including four steps. Within step one group interview with four mixed groups of health professionals (both Primary and Specialised Care), patient representatives and managers will be conducted. The groups will give input on firstly, what information they think is important to include in the referral letters, and secondly, what impact they think improved referral letters can have for the organisation and care within Specialised Mental Health Care. Within step two a validated check-list to assess the quality of referral letters will be developed. Within step three outcome measures will be developed and tested. Both step two and three will make use of the results from step one in addition to existing literature and testing. Step four is the intervention study where measures from the former steps will be used.

Study Type

Interventional

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

  • Norway
      • Haugesund, Norway, 5504
        • Helse Fonna Local Health Authorities

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:

  • Referral letters send from a GP to Public Specialised Mental Health Care
  • Referrals for elective assessment or treatment

Exclusion Criteria:

  • Referral letters send from other health personnel
  • Referrals for acute care (within 24 hours)

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

  • Primary Purpose: Health Services Research
  • Allocation: Randomized
  • Interventional Model: Parallel Assignment
  • Masking: Single

Arms and Interventions

Participant Group / Arm
Intervention / Treatment
Experimental: Participating GPs
GPs working at randomly selected GP centers/offices within the region that are invited to participate and signs a written informed consent to participate. (N=30-40)
Other: Quality improvement intervention
A complex intervention will be implemented within the group of GPs in the intervention group. It includes participation in defining criteria for good referral letters, information about the correlation between information in the referral letters and outcome, introduction to the guideline, and consecutive feedback on own preformance regarding content of referral letter and outcome for the patient.
No Intervention: Control group
GPs working at randomly selected GP centers/office within the region that are not invited to participate, will form the control group. (N=30-40)

What is the study measuring?

Primary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure
Measure Description
Time Frame
Length of stay
Time Frame: Day of discharge assessed up to six months
From date of admission or onset of out-patient treatment until date of discharge (documented in Electronic Patient Record as end of treatment periode), assessed up to six months from admission.
Day of discharge assessed up to six months

Secondary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure
Measure Description
Time Frame
Response time for referral letters in Specialised Mental Health Care
Time Frame: Referral letters will be followed for the duration of the assessment and prioritation process until response letter is sent, an expected avarage of 10 days.
Unit of measure: Number of days from receiving a referral letter to the response letter is sent to the patient and the General Practitioner. The response time for all letters recieved in a six month periode before the intervention to improve the quality of referral letters will be compared with the response time after the intervention.
Referral letters will be followed for the duration of the assessment and prioritation process until response letter is sent, an expected avarage of 10 days.

Collaborators and Investigators

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

Sponsor

Helse Fonna

Collaborators

University of Bergen
KU Leuven

Investigators

  • Study Chair: Aslak B Aslaksen, MD, PhD, Faculty of Medicine and Dentistery, University of Bergen, Norway
  • Principal Investigator: Kjell Haug, MD, PhD, Faculty of Medicine and Dentistery, University of Bergen, Norway
  • Principal Investigator: Kris Vanhaecht, RN, PhD, KU Leuven

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 (Actual)

August 1, 2010

Primary Completion (Actual)

June 22, 2016

Study Completion (Actual)

December 13, 2019

Study Registration Dates

First Submitted

April 28, 2011

First Submitted That Met QC Criteria

June 14, 2011

First Posted (Estimate)

June 15, 2011

Study Record Updates

Last Update Posted (Actual)

February 13, 2020

Last Update Submitted That Met QC Criteria

February 11, 2020

Last Verified

February 1, 2020

More Information

Terms related to this study

Keywords

Additional Relevant MeSH Terms

Other Study ID Numbers

  • NSD-24340

Plan for Individual participant data (IPD)

Plan to Share Individual Participant Data (IPD)?

NO

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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