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Impact of An Emergency Response System on Anxiety and Health-Care Use

NCT00330720 · Status: COMPLETED · Phase: NA · Type: INTERVENTIONAL · Enrollment: 80

Last updated 2006-05-29

No results posted yet for this study

Summary

What to do after an elderly patient falls but is not seriously injured can be a very challenging decisions for the patient and the Emergency Physician. Unfortunately, homecare support is often unavailable for weeks. The patient and physician must then choose between discharge home without support, or hospitalization. An emergency response service (ERS) allows the patient to summon assistance from anywhere in their home, and may provide another option.

Objectives: To see how an ERS affects patients' anxiety, fear of falling, and use of the health-care system after discharge. We will study patients over 70 years of age who have fallen but do not need to be hospitalized. Our belief is that the ERS will improve patient anxiety, and may prevent return visits to the Emergency or episodes of prolonged immobilization after a fall.

Methods: Patients agreeing to participate in the study will be assigned by chance to receive either current standard discharge care, or standard care plus the use of the emergency response system. Patients will be interviewed one month after discharge to compare the impact of the ERS. This study is a first step in deciding whether the ERS is a useful new technology.

Conditions

Interventions

DEVICE

Emergency Response System (Device)

Sponsors & Collaborators

  • The Physicians' Services Incorporated Foundation

    collaborator OTHER

  • Lifeline

    collaborator UNKNOWN

  • Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre

    lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

  • Jacques S. Lee, MD · Sunnybrook Health Sciences Center

Study Design

Allocation
RANDOMIZED
Purpose
TREATMENT
Masking
SINGLE
Model
SINGLE_GROUP

Eligibility

Min Age
70 Years
Sex
ALL
Healthy Volunteers
No

Timeline & Regulatory

Start
2002-11-30
Completion
2004-06-30

Countries

  • Canada

Study Locations

More Related Trials

Entities

Diseases

Read the full study record

This page highlights key information. For complete eligibility criteria, study locations, investigator contacts, and the full protocol, visit the original record on ClinicalTrials.gov.

View NCT00330720 on ClinicalTrials.gov