Comprehensive Care Physician: Integrated Inpatient and Outpatient Care for Patients at High Risk of Hospitalization

Summary

The investigators propose an innovative new model of care in which patients identified to be at high risk of hospitalization are offered care by a physician who will direct their care both in the hospital and in clinic but is able to do so because they see patients only at high risk of hospitalization. This allows these physicians to have a panel of patients that is small enough that they can provide them with continuing ambulatory care but sick enough for those physicians to have enough of their patients hospitalized at any time to justify having the physician spend several hours each morning seeing those patients in the hospital, making the model economically viable and clinically valuable for the patient. The investigators estimate that each of the 5 physicians the investigators propose to establish in this model will serve a panel of about 200 patients in steady state with an average of 10 days of expected hospitalization and $75,000 each in Medicare spending per year, totaling $75 million annually. The investigators estimate that a 1% reduction in costs for these patients will be more than enough to cover the ongoing costs of the model the investigators propose; this is because the investigators' program reorganizes care rather than adding new forms of care.

Conditions

• Medicare Patients
• High Risk of Hospitalizations

Interventions

OTHER

Comprehensive Care

Patients will receive comprehensive medical care from their CCP in clinic and the hospital. For most patients, the ambulatory care provided by the CCP will be in our onsite medicine clinic, but for some patients with subspecialty needs the CCP may be a specialist who will care for the patient in a nearby ambulatory setting (e.g., nursing home, dialysis facility). The CCPs will also supervise the nurses, pharmacists, social workers, and others who are part of the multi-disciplinary care team. Daytime inpatient care will be provided by CCPs in conjunction with our inpatient advanced practice nurses (APNs). These APNs now work with our hospitalists, so they are experienced providing hospital care.

Sponsors & Collaborators

• University HealthSystem Consortium

  collaborator OTHER

• University of Illinois at Chicago

  collaborator OTHER

• Rush University Medical Center

  collaborator OTHER

• Northwestern University

  collaborator OTHER

• Endeavor Health

  collaborator OTHER

• University of Chicago

  lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

• David Meltzer, MD, PhD · University of Chicago

Study Design

Allocation

RANDOMIZED

Purpose

HEALTH_SERVICES_RESEARCH

Masking

NONE

Model

PARALLEL

Eligibility

Min Age

18 Years

Sex

ALL

Healthy Volunteers

No

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2012-11-30

Primary Completion

2026-01-31

Completion

2028-12-31

Countries

• United States

Study Locations