Telephone Contact Between Hospital and General Practitioner About Medication Review for Older Patients

Can Telephone Contact After Discharge Between Geriatrician, Clinical Pharmacist and General Practitioner About Medication Review in Hospital Improve the Medication in Older Patients? A Feasibility Study.

In this trial, the feasibility of cooperation between clinical pharmacists and physicians by conducting a telephone follow-up conversation between the hospital geriatrician, the general practitioner and the clinical pharmacist is evaluated. During hospital stay the clinical pharmacist and the geriatrician will review older patients' medication and discuss the future treatment with the general practitioner after discharge by telephone or medico-technology.

The first part of the feasibility study will be a qualitative baseline measure of characteristics of the participants and work flow. The second part will be a pilot randomized controlled study where participants will be allocated to either usual care or medication review and follow up contact

Study Overview

• Status: Completed
• Conditions: Older Patients; Medication Review; Cross-sectional Communication
• Intervention / Treatment: Behavioral: Medication review

• Study Type: Interventional
• Enrollment (Actual): 232
• Phase: Not Applicable

Contacts and Locations

Study Locations

• Denmark
  • Odense, Denmark, 5000
    • Odense University Hospital
  • Svendborg, Denmark
    • Svendborg Sygehus

Participation Criteria

Eligibility Criteria

• Ages Eligible for Study: 65 years and older (Older Adult)
• Accepts Healthy Volunteers: No
• Genders Eligible for Study: All

Description

Inclusion Criteria:

* 5 drugs or more

Exclusion Criteria:

• Terminal illness
• Not able to speak and understand Danish

Study Plan

How is the study designed?

Design Details

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

Number of Arms

2

Arms and Interventions

Participant Group / Arm	Intervention / Treatment
Experimental: Intervention; Medication history by pharmaconomist. Medication review by pharmacist, patient interview, and conference with physician in hospital, telephone contact to general practitioner after discharge, medication report sent to primary care.	Behavioral: Medication review; Conducted by the pharmacist and discussed with hospital physician
No Intervention: Control; Medication history by pharmaconomist. Usual care by physicians.

What is the study measuring?

Primary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure	Measure Description	Time Frame
Changes in number of medications	Increase or decrease in number of medications from admission to discharge	At admission and at discharge
Parts of the intervention completed	In the intervention Group only, it is measured, how many of the elements of the intervention the patient actually have received	Day 1 after discharge
Changes in the Electronic Medication Profile (FMK)	How many changes have been Applied to the Electronic Medication Profile	14 days after discharge

Secondary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure	Measure Description	Time Frame
Number of readmissions	Data from registers	within 30 days after discharge
Number of emergency visits	Data from registers	within 30 days after discharge
Number of visits at general practitioner	Data from registers	within 30 days after discharge
Patient satisfaction with the discharge	Measured by telephone interview	14 days after discharge
Changes in patient-experienced quality of life	Measured by telephone interview using the 5-item questionnaire EQ-5D, where each question can be answered on a 5-point Likert Scale ranging from "very high degree of problems" to "very low degree of problems"	At admission and 14 days after discharge
Health care professionals satisfaction	Measured by a questionnaire	3 months after implementation

Collaborators and Investigators

• Sponsor: Odense University Hospital
• Investigators: Study Chair: Anton Pottegård, phd, University of Southern Denmark

Study record dates

Study Major Dates

• Study Start (Actual): November 24, 2017
• Primary Completion (Actual): November 1, 2018
• Study Completion (Actual): November 30, 2018

Study Registration Dates

• First Submitted: November 21, 2017
• First Submitted That Met QC Criteria: December 6, 2017
• First Posted (Actual): December 12, 2017

Study Record Updates

• Last Update Posted (Actual): March 19, 2019
• Last Update Submitted That Met QC Criteria: March 18, 2019
• Last Verified: March 1, 2019

More Information

Terms related to this study

• Other Study ID Numbers: OP_468; 1704197 (Other Grant/Funding Number: Sundheds- og Ældreministeriet)

Plan for Individual participant data (IPD)

• Plan to Share Individual Participant Data (IPD)?: No
• IPD Plan Description: No IPD are planned sharing

Drug and device information, study documents

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