Improving the safety and experience of transitions from hospital to home: a cluster randomised controlled trial of an intervention to involve older people in their care (Your Care Needs You)

Background

Transitions from hospital to home are risky for older people. The role of patient involvement in supporting safe transitions is unclear.

Objective

To assess the clinical effectiveness of an intervention to improve the safety and experience of care transitions for older people.

Trial design

Cluster randomised controlled trial.

Participants

Eleven National Health Service acute hospital trusts and 42 wards (clusters) routinely providing care for older people (aged 75 years and older) planning to transition back home.

Intervention

Patient involvement ward-level intervention—Your Care Needs You (YCNY).

Outcomes

Unplanned hospital readmission rates within 30 days of discharge (primary outcome). Secondary outcomes included readmissions at 60 and 90 days post-discharge, experience of transitions and safety events.

Randomisation

Ward as the unit of randomisation from varying medical specialities randomised to YCNY or care-as-usual on a 1:1 basis.

Blinding

Ward staff, research nurses and researchers were unblinded. Patients were unaware of treatment allocation. Statisticians were blinded to the primary outcome data until statistical analysis plan sign-off.

Results

Using a mixed effects logistic regression we saw no significant difference in unplanned 30-day readmission rates (OR 0.93; 95% CI, 0.78 to 1.10; P = .372) between intervention (17%) and control (19%). At all timepoints, rates were lower in the intervention group. The total number of readmissions was lower in the intervention group (all timepoints) reaching statistical significance across 90-days with 13% fewer readmissions (IRR: 0.87; 95% CI 0.76 to 0.99) than the control. At 30-days only, intervention group patients reported better experiences of transitions and significantly fewer safety events. Serious adverse events were similarly observed in both groups [YCNY: 26 (52.0%), Care-as-usual: 24 (48.0%)]. None related to treatment.

Conclusions

YCNY did not significantly impact on unplanned hospital readmissions at 30 days but in some secondary outcomes we did find evidence of clinical benefit.