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Trial of the CarePartner Program for Improving the Quality of Transition Support

NCT01672398 · Status: COMPLETED · Phase: NA · Type: INTERVENTIONAL · Enrollment: 271

Last updated 2016-11-07

No results posted yet for this study

Summary

Background: Patients hospitalized with complex chronic conditions frequently experience preventable short-term readmissions due to inadequate transition support. Although structured discharge planning with telephone follow-up improves transition outcomes, these services often are unavailable, and proactive outreach is often inadequate once the patient returns home. Informal caregivers are invaluable for ensuring successful transitions, but many patients live alone, have an in-home caregiver who is struggling with competing demands, or live at a distance from adult children or other potential sources of support. New models are needed for transition support that include low-cost technologies and more structured assistance for patients' informal caregiving network, while providing patients' clinical teams with the information they need to avert health crises.

Objectives: Consistent with Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality goals to improve transitions using accessible health IT, we will evaluate a novel intervention designed to improve the effectiveness of transition support for common chronic conditions via three mechanisms of action: (a) direct tailored communication to patients via automated calls post discharge, (b) support for informal caregivers via structured feedback about the patient's status and advice about how they can help, and (c) support for proactive care management including a web-based disease management tool, automated alerts about potential problems, and the capacity for asynchronous communication with patients and their caregivers. Specifically, the trial will determine: 1) whether the CarePartner intervention improves patients' readmission risk and functional status; 2) the impact of the intervention on patients' self-care behaviors and the quality of the transition process; and 3) whether the intervention improves caregiver burden and stress levels.

Conditions

  • Post-discharge

Interventions

OTHER

Telemonitoring plus self-management support

Patients in the intervention group receive automated telephone calls that ask about their health and self-care along with tailored health-related feedback. The patient's CarePartner receives health update reports about the patient and how they can help via e-mail. Urgent health problems are reported to the patient's health care team via fax or e-mail.

Sponsors & Collaborators

Principal Investigators

  • John D. Piette, Ph.D. · VA Center for Clinical Management Research & the University of Michigan

Study Design

Allocation
RANDOMIZED
Purpose
HEALTH_SERVICES_RESEARCH
Masking
NONE
Model
PARALLEL

Eligibility

Min Age
21 Years
Sex
ALL
Healthy Volunteers
No

Timeline & Regulatory

Start
2012-08-31
Primary Completion
2016-10-31
Completion
2016-10-31

Countries

  • United States

Study Locations

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Entities

Companies

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 NCT01672398 on ClinicalTrials.gov