Optimal - reduction in re admission rates to hospital
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Optimal - Optimisation of Discharge Mechanism for the Prevention of Unnecessary Readmissions
IRAS ID
184094
Contact name
Yuk L Chang
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Croydon University Hospital
Duration of Study in the UK
2 years, 11 months, 31 days
Research summary
This project is to look at optimisation of the discharge process for patients. Currently Croydon uses a computerised system called Cerner. This enables us to have a system of automatically analysing the data of all hospital admissions in a rapid fashion. There is already a hospital avoidance team in place, along with a drive from the community sector, to drive down readmissions of patients recently discharged.
The purpose of this study is to see if we can utilise the current IT system to enable a risk scoring of all admissions, such that the patients with high risk score for re-admission, are identified early on in their admission, and then directed to the hospital avoidance team at the point of discharge. There would be newly created care navigators, whose role is to ensure a directory of services of all support for discharge patients are readily available, to ensure best utilisation of all available resources and avoidance of potential readmission.
The system therefore involves:
1. Gathering of baseline of all resources open for patients at point of discharge to help support them
2. Gathering views and opinions of relevant stakeholders (year 1)
3. Analysis of the database of all adult hospital admissions and readmissions over a 6 year time frame to see if risk score could be generated (year 1 and 2)
4. Employ the risk scoring system in year 3 (year 3) so that the identified high risk patients are offered the best available support at the time of discharge to see if future hospital readmissions are indeed reduced (analysis at end of year 3)REC name
London - South East Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
16/LO/0046
Date of REC Opinion
27 Jan 2016
REC opinion
Favourable Opinion