Project Details
Description
Unnecessary discharges from a hospital to a skilled nursing facility (SNF) are costly and may accelerate
patients’ functional losses and requirement for long-term institutionalization. Patients with Alzheimer's Disease
and Alzheimer's Disease Related Dementias (AD/ADRD) and other types of cognitive impairment are uniquely
disadvantaged by this status quo in that they are twice as likely to be hospitalized, four times more likely to be
discharged to SNFs with less than 50% returning to their homes. This situation can be addressed as it is the
product of a typically rushed discharge planning process with inadequate time to discover, much less address,
a patient’s barriers to home discharge. Recent reports suggest that as many as a third of patients dismissed to
SNFs, including those with AD/ADRD, could return directly home if their post-acute care (PAC) needs and
barriers were anticipated and addressed. Several key deficits prevent broad realization of a patients’ potential to
discharge directly home, or their Home PAC Potential (HoPe). These include a limited ability to: 1) quantify
factors that determine PAC needs, 2) identify and address remediable barriers to home discharge, and 3)
mobilize stakeholders for advancement of individualized discharge plans. Collectively, these deficits prevent
the timely initiation of acute care services that can realize a patient’s potential for home discharge, with PAC as
necessary. Rehabilitation-focused, hospital-Home Healthcare Agency (HHA) partnerships have established that
interdisciplinary care plans enacted early in a hospital stay with patient and caregiver involvement increase the
likelihood of a patient’s return home. Our team developed an Epic electronic health record (EHR)-based
discharge planning system that triangulates EHR, patient reported outcomes (PROs), and social determinants
of health data to identify HoPe barriers and direct needs-matched rehabilitation service delivery. A pilot of the
system among 358 patients increased the home discharge rate by over 25% and revealed high user
acceptability. However, the pilot also identified the need to improve addressing of cognitive impairments,
targeting of high-yield HoPe barriers, and engagement of non-clinical stakeholders. We propose to address
these limitations by pursuing three Specific Aims: 1) Develop a low-burden computerized adaptive test PRO to
assess the domains of functional cognition relevant to a safe home discharge; 2) Develop a machine learning
algorithm to prioritize actionable HoPe barriers and estimate the degree of change needed for home discharge;
and 3) Apply user-centered design principles to refine the EHR discharge planning system for optimal usability
and enhanced EHR portal patient, caregiver, and HHA staff access. Our goal is to both integrate and pilot
these deliverables in a mature and optimally usable EHR discharge planning system, and to evaluate the
feasibility and acceptability of its implementation. We anticipate that the system will be scalable, and amenable
to inter-institution transfer for testing in a multi-site pragmatic trial.
Status | Active |
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Effective start/end date | 8/3/22 → 4/30/24 |
Funding
- National Institute on Aging: $1,047,570.00
- National Institute on Aging: $1,174,303.00
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