Mobile Phone-administered Triage Tool to Followup on Discharged Trauma Patients

University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA)

Status: Completed

Conditions: Wounds and Injury

Treatments: Other: Mobile Phone-based Triage Tool

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT03805646

GRANT12763845

Details and patient eligibility

About

After being admitted to and then discharged from a hospital in Cameroon for having experienced an injury, there is no established way for the health system to check in on how the discharged person is doing. The investigators have developed a set of questions with the hope that asking these questions--over the phone--to those who have been discharged from the hospital will allow them to determine which post-discharge patients would benefit from further care. The investigators believe that asking these questions over the phone is a good way of determining which post-discharge trauma patients would benefit from further care.

Full description

Broadly, this study aims to answer three questions. (1) Is it feasible to call discharged trauma patients on their mobile phones to check up on them? (2) Can a defined set of questions help determine which discharged trauma patients require further medical care (and which discharged trauma patients do not require further medical care)? (3) Will checking in on discharged trauma patients reduce their experience of disability and economic consequences?

If an individual was a trauma patient who was admitted at and then discharged from one of the study's partner hospitals in Cameroon, the discharged individual (hereafter referred to as "the participant') will be receiving phone calls from one of the study's research assistants at the following post-discharge timepoints: 2 weeks, 1 month, 3 months, and 6 months. Whether the research assistant administers the defined set of questions developed by the study's investigators (see question 2, above) will depend on when the participant was discharged from the hospital. Regardless, all participants will be asked other important questions about the injury and any associated disabilities and economic consequences.

Enrollment: 3,990 patients

Sex: All

Volunteers: Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion and exclusion criteria

Inclusion Criteria:

• All trauma registry patients at participating hospitals who provided cellphone numbers and are alive at hospital discharge are eligible for inclusion regardless of age, injury severity, or hospital disposition status.

Trial design

Primary purpose: Supportive Care

Allocation: Non-Randomized

Interventional model: Parallel Assignment

Masking: None (Open label)

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3,990 participants in 2 patient groups

No Mobile Phone-administered Triage Tool

No Intervention group

Description:

For each hospital site: Baseline data will be collected for six months. \*\*This extended beyond 6 months due to the COVID pandemic\*\*\*

Mobile Phone-administered Triage Tool

Experimental group

Description:

For each hospital site: After the first six months of baseline data collection, the mobile phone-administered triage tool (or "Mobile Phone-based Triage Tool") will be implemented for a year. \*\*This extended beyond 1 year due to the COVID pandemic\*\*\*

Treatment:

Other: Mobile Phone-based Triage Tool