The Alice Springs Hospital Readmission Prevention Project (ASHRAPP): a randomised control trial

Diplock, Gabrielle, Ward, James, Stewart, Simon, Scuffham, Paul, Stewart, Penny, Reeve, Carole, Davidson, Lea, and Maguire, Graeme (2017) The Alice Springs Hospital Readmission Prevention Project (ASHRAPP): a randomised control trial. BMC Health Services Research, 17. 153. pp. 1-11.

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Abstract

Background: Hospitals are frequently faced with high levels of emergency department presentations and demand for inpatient care. An important contributing factor is the subset of patients with complex chronic diseases who have frequent and preventable exacerbations of their chronic diseases. Evidence suggests that some of these hospital readmissions can be prevented with appropriate transitional care. Whilst there is a growing body of evidence for transitional care processes in urban, non-indigenous settings, there is a paucity of information regarding rural and remote settings and, specifically, the indigenous context.

Methods: This randomised control trial compares a tailored, multidimensional transitional care package to usual care. The objective is to evaluate the efficacy of the transitional care package for Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australian patients with chronic diseases at risk of recurrent readmission with the aim of reducing readmission rates and improving transition to primary care in a remote setting. Patients will be recruited from medical and surgical admissions to Alice Springs Hospital and will be followed for 12 months. The primary outcome measure will be number of admissions to hospital with secondary outcomes including number of emergency department presentations, number of ICU admissions, days alive and out of hospital, time to primary care review post discharge and cost-effectiveness.

Discussion: Successful transition from hospital to home is important for patients with complex chronic diseases. Evidence suggests that a coordinated transitional care plan can result in a reduction in length of hospital stay and readmission rates for adults with complex medical needs. This will be the first study to evaluate a tailored multidimensional transitional care intervention to prevent readmission in Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australian residents of remote Australia who are frequently admitted to hospital. If demonstrated to be effective it will have implications for the care and management of Indigenous Australians throughout regional and remote Australia and in other remote, culturally and linguistically diverse populations and settings.

Item ID: 47646
Item Type: Article (Research - C1)
ISSN: 1472-6963
Keywords: readmission prevention, transitional care, discharge planning, Indigenous health, health service intervention
Additional Information:

© The Author(s). 2017 Open Access: This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.

Funders: National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC), Victorian Government's Operational Infrastructure Support Program, NHMRC Centre for Research Excellence to Reduce Inequality in Heart Disease
Date Deposited: 27 Apr 2017 23:55
FoR Codes: 45 INDIGENOUS STUDIES > 4504 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health and wellbeing > 450409 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health services @ 60%
42 HEALTH SCIENCES > 4203 Health services and systems > 420311 Health systems @ 40%
SEO Codes: 92 HEALTH > 9201 Clinical Health (Organs, Diseases and Abnormal Conditions) > 920199 Clinical Health (Organs, Diseases and Abnormal Conditions) not elsewhere classified @ 100%
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