Discharge in the AM

University of Colorado Denver (CU Denver)

Status: Completed

Conditions: Flow or Discharge; Hospitalism

Treatments: Other: Rounding on discharging patients first

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT05370638

19-1607

Details and patient eligibility

About

As hospitals around the country continue to work to manage a high patient census, provider prioritization of discharges is one low cost mechanism to help improve patient throughput and patient length of stay. The investigators conducted a prospective randomized study to understand if this commonly utilized approach to expedite care results in earlier discharges and lower hospital lengths of stay while also understanding the impact on other patient care (such as test and consult order times on other patients that the physician is caring for).

Full description

Hospitals around the country face bottlenecks and capacity issues. When hospitals are successful at managing high capacity this allows for increased access for patients who need this higher level of care and expertise.

Unfortunately, hospital discharges frequently occur in the afternoon or evening hours and can adversely affect patient flow throughout the hospital which, in turn, can result in delays in care, medication errors, increased mortality, longer lengths of stay, higher costs, lower patient satisfaction, and decreased access to care at these facilities. While some of the delays in discharges result, appropriately, from the caring of other patients and conducting the necessary tasks and assessments for acutely ill patients, previous work also identified that providers may be able to prioritize their work in a different way in order to facilitate this throughput. The investigators aim to conduct a randomized controlled trial of physician rounding style at three institutions in order to: (1) determine if prioritizing discharging patients first will result in earlier discharges and decreased lengths of stay, (2) determine if prioritizing discharges first will cause other care delays or affect patient experience and, (3) determine factors that contribute to physician ability to prioritizing discharges first. The study is a prospective, multi-center, cluster randomized trial designed to test the effects of rounding on discharging patients first compared to usual practice and will utilize an effectiveness-implementation hybrid approach. The investigators will recruit hospitalist attending physicians from three hospitals in the US to be randomized to one of two rounding styles: (1) prioritize discharges first and (2) usual practice. The main outcome measure will be discharge order time. Secondary outcomes will be length of stay and lab/diagnostic test order time. Additionally, the investigators will study how team composition (teaching, non-teaching, teams with advanced practice providers), team census (i.e. the number of patients a provider is caring for), and number of admissions affect the ability for providers to prioritize discharges first.

Through qualitative methods the investigators will also gain an understanding from physicians as to why or why not they were able to prioritize discharges first. This study will add to the evidence to either support or negate the practice of prioritizing discharges. There have been no randomized studies to date that have addressed these issues. Additionally, the investigators aim to understand how team composition and census affect discharge times. Institutions across the country will be able to utilize these findings to help refine current rounding models. The investigators believe these findings will be pivotal for clinicians to be more willing to change their practice style. The investigators also believe this study will aid in the understanding of what factors may function as facilitators and barriers of earlier discharges.

Enrollment: 61 patients

Sex: All

Volunteers: Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

Physicians:

-Hospital Medicine attending-level physicians who consented to participate and patients

Patients:

• At least 18 years of age
• Admitted to a Medicine service and assigned by standard practice to a general medical hospitalist team including a provider who agreed to participate in the study

Exclusion criteria

-Patients assigned, by standard practice, to a general medical hospitalist team and on the team of providers who chose not to participate in the study

Trial design

Primary purpose: Health Services Research

Allocation: Randomized

Interventional model: Parallel Assignment

Masking: None (Open label)

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61 participants in 2 patient groups

rounding on discharging patients first

Experimental group

Description:

Rounding on discharging patients meant that the attending physician and accompanying team (i.e. if they were working with advanced practice providers or learners) would prioritize seeing any patients that were going to discharge that day.

Treatment:

Other: Rounding on discharging patients first

usual practice

No Intervention group

Description:

Usual practice was categorized as: seeing discharging patients first, sickest patients, decompensating patients, new patients (i.e. patients admitted to their team overnight), or based on geography.