Evaluation of the Philips Lifeline CareSage Risk Assessment System

Evaluating the Impact of an Integrated Risk Assessment System (Philips Lifeline Personal Emergency Response Service) on Healthcare Utilization

This study is being done to evaluate the impact of a system called CareSage. The CareSage system is a technology that uses clinical data to monitor, identify and target care to patients at risk of being transported to the hospital. The investigators want to see whether the CareSage system is effective in helping to identify hospital admissions which can be prevented.

Study Overview

• Status: Completed
• Conditions: Multimorbidity
• Intervention / Treatment: Other: Lifeline CareSage Flagging

Detailed Description

The growing elderly population and rising rates of costly chronic disease have led to the development of preventative homecare management opportunities to improve health outcomes and reduce the number of patients who enter costly inpatient care. Partners HealthCare at Home (PHH) is a preventative homecare management system which offers general care as well as specialized services to help patients and their loved ones manage chronic conditions at home. Such continuity of care is achieved through a multidisciplinary clinical team and the integration of telemonitoring into the patient's care plan.

The Philips Lifeline Personal Emergency Response Service (PERS), a wearable button device worn on the wrist or as a pendant, is a telemonitoring device available to patients receiving care through PHH. When the patient presses the button, the patient is immediately connected with a Lifeline response agent. Philips Lifeline (PLL) has developed CareSage, a predictive analytics engine that combines continuous monitoring with predictive analytics. The clinical interface (CareSage platform) helps care teams monitor the patient's calculated risk scores for emergency transport. The algorithm used by this integrated risk assessment system was originally developed after studying a large cohort of the PERS subscribers (N = ~600,000). In Phase 1 of this study the algorithm was validated among a cohort (N = 3,335) of PHH patients to predict emergency transports in this population (AUC = .76).

In Phase 2 of this study, the investigators will conduct a prospective, randomized trial of 370 patients to assess the effect of the risk assessment CareSage platform and PHH tailored interventions on the rate of readmissions, quality of life, and the overall cost of medical care. The investigators hypothesize that a multidisciplinary intervention approach could significantly reduce the healthcare resource utilization in patient at high risk for hospitalization. The intervention will flag those patients at the highest risk for hospital transport, alert the patient's care team that an intervention may be needed, thereby targeting care at high risk patients who are most likely to get readmitted. By predicting which patients are at high risk of hospital transport which may lead to hospitalization, targeting interventions at those patients and engaging patients with their care team, the investigators hope to reduce readmissions, hospital days, and rates of mortality in high risk patients.

The goal of this 2-arm randomized controlled study is to assess the impact of the CareSage risk assessment platform on 90- and 180-day Emergency Department (ED) visits in a cohort of PHH patients. All patients will receive the PERS device and be followed for a total of 9 months, including an initial 3-month observation period and followed by a 6-month intervention period. At the beginning of the observation period (baseline), enrolled patients will be randomized into 2 groups: the Intervention Group or the Control Group. During the observation period the CareSage algorithm will calibrate using patient data (both groups) collected during this interval from the PERS device. Then, during the intervention period, patients in the intervention group will be actively monitored by the CareSage algorithm and will receive tailored PHH interventions if flagged as being at high risk for emergency transport. Patients in the control group will receive care as usual during the intervention period. All data collected during the study will be used to further strengthen the CareSage algorithm developed in the Phase I of this study.

• Study Type: Interventional
• Enrollment (Actual): 370
• Phase: Not Applicable

Contacts and Locations

Study Locations

• United States
  • Massachusetts
    • Waltham, Massachusetts, United States, 02451
      • Partners Healthcare at Home

Participation Criteria

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:

• Aged 18 years or older
• Receiving care from Partners Healthcare at Home (PHH)
• Total healthcare costs fall within the middle 51st-95th percentile of patients seen at Partners Healthcare from fiscal year 2016

Exclusion Criteria:

• Currently on admission in a hospital facility with planned discharge to a long-term-care facility or Skilled Nursing Facilities (SNFs).
• Severe dementia, Alzheimer's or other serious psychiatric illness (severe anxiety disorder or psychosis).
• Enrolled in the Integrated Care Management Program (iCMP) program.
• Continued telemonitoring (TM) support extending into the 6 months of study period post the observation period of 3 months.
• PHH patients with pacemakers and other implanted devices

Study Plan

How is the study designed?

Design Details

• Primary Purpose: OTHER
• Allocation: RANDOMIZED
• Interventional Model: PARALLEL
• Masking: SINGLE

Number of Arms

2

Arms and Interventions

Participant Group / Arm	Intervention / Treatment
EXPERIMENTAL: Group A; This group will include a cohort of 185 participants who will be monitored by the CareSage risk assessment platform. Tailored interventions, using a Stepped-Care Approach, will be targeted to patients flagged as high risk for emergency transport during the 6-month intervention period.	Other: Lifeline CareSage Flagging; Patients in the intervention group will receive active monitoring by the CareSage risk assessment platform and clinical interface, including nurse triage calls and tailored PHH interventions. Beginning at month 4, the CareSage algorithm will assess patients' risk for emergency transport every 30 days. Patients identified as high risk will receive nurse triage calls and, depending on their needs, tailored care according to a stepped-care approach. The principal goals will be to reinforce the patients' education, ensure compliance with medications and diet, and identify recurrent symptoms amenable to treatment on an outpatient basis to avoid readmissions
NO_INTERVENTION: Group B; This group will include a cohort of 185 participants where study staff will not see if patients are flagged by the CareSage risk assessment platform as being at high or low risk for emergency transport during the 6-month intervention period. Patients will continue to receive care as usual.

What is the study measuring?

Primary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure	Measure Description	Time Frame
Number of participants who visit the emergency department 90 and 180 days after the three month observational period and assessed by reviewing the medical records	To assess the impact of the CareSage risk assessment platform and tailored PHH intervention on the 90- and 180- day ED visits.	9 months after study enrollment

Secondary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure	Measure Description	Time Frame
Emergency Transport use	Patient usage of emergency transport	9 months after study enrollment
30-, 90- and 180- day readmissions	Data pertaining to the 30-day readmissions will be collected in the intervention period (6 months).	9 months after study enrollment
Total number of avoidable hospital admissions using Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) criteria	Total number of avoidable hospital admissions	9 months after study enrollment
Total medical expenses attributable to the avoidable admissions	Total medical expenses attributable to the avoidable admissions	9 months after study enrollment
Mortality rates	Patient deaths	9 months after study enrollment
Time to readmission	Length of time before patient was readmitted.	9 months after study enrollment
Patient quality of life	This outcome will be assessed using a validated questionnaire- Short-form 12 version 2 (SF-12v2)	9 months after study enrollment
Patient satisfaction with the service	Patient and provider satisfaction with the service will be evaluated using a Satisfaction survey designed specifically for this study	9 months after study enrollment
Patient leakage	Number of patients who have been admitted to hospitals outside of the Partners network will be assessed by patient self-disclosure at close-out	9 months after study enrollment
PLL switch rate from No to Yes-Payment at the end of the study.	The PLL switch rate from No to Yes-Payment will be evaluated at the end of the study by using the billing accounts from Phillips	9 months after study enrollment
Total number of hospital admissions assessed by reviewing the medical record	Total number of hospital admissions for participants	9 months after study enrollment

Collaborators and Investigators

• Sponsor: Massachusetts General Hospital
• Collaborators: Philips Healthcare

Publications and helpful links

General Publications

• Palacholla RS, Fischer NC, Agboola S, Nikolova-Simons M, Odametey S, Golas SB, Op den Buijs J, Schertzer L, Kvedar J, Jethwani K. Evaluating the Impact of a Web-Based Risk Assessment System (CareSage) and Tailored Interventions on Health Care Utilization: Protocol for a Randomized Controlled Trial. JMIR Res Protoc. 2018 May 9;7(5):e10045. doi: 10.2196/10045.

Study record dates

Study Major Dates

• Study Start (ACTUAL): May 19, 2017
• Primary Completion (ACTUAL): April 16, 2019
• Study Completion (ACTUAL): November 30, 2019

Study Registration Dates

• First Submitted: April 14, 2017
• First Submitted That Met QC Criteria: April 20, 2017
• First Posted (ACTUAL): April 24, 2017

Study Record Updates

• Last Update Posted (ACTUAL): September 1, 2020
• Last Update Submitted That Met QC Criteria: August 29, 2020
• Last Verified: August 1, 2020

More Information

Terms related to this study

• Other Study ID Numbers: 2017P000195

Drug and device information, study documents

• Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated drug product: No
• Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated device product: No