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A Hospital-at-Home Pilot in Singapore

NCT04330378 · Status: COMPLETED · Type: OBSERVATIONAL · Enrollment: 378

Last updated 2024-01-09

No results posted yet for this study

Summary

Hospital-at-home models seek to address the impending shortage of hospital beds by reimagining the way we deliver acute hospital-level care - substituting the ward for a patient's home. Such programmes have been well established in other countries such as Australia, Europe and USA to be a less costly way to provide inpatient care as a result of a reduction of fixed costs of building and running hospitals, with equivalent variable costs and comparable clinical outcomes. Acute services are provided at home, including regular visits by doctors, nurses and therapists, intravenous therapy, simple investigations and 24/7 access to doctors. The clinical service is tech-enabled, by remote monitoring and telecommunication technologies.

Although overseas experience suggests that hospital-at-home programmes are an effective, safe and scalable substitute for inpatient beds, and promising strategy to meet the bed demands of our ageing population, the outcomes in the local environment is unclear. Singapore has a unique healthcare system compared to primarily insurance driven (USA) or publicly funded (UK and Australia), which favours subsidies of inpatient care compared to community-based care. In addition, cultural beliefs of hospitals as a source of comfort and healing and unfamiliarity with healthcare providers performing home visits may provide unique challenges which may affect outcomes of a hospital-at-home programme in Singapore. In an Asian setting, family and informal caregivers are heavily involved in the care of patients and may pose unique barriers and facilitators to such care at home that may not be evident in similar models in Western countries.

This study aims to evaluate the effectiveness, feasibility and processes of a new hospital-at-home programme in Singapore.

Conditions

  • Hospital-at-home

Interventions

OTHER

Hospital-at-home

As per experimental arm

OTHER

Usual in-hospital care

As per control arm

Sponsors & Collaborators

Principal Investigators

  • Stephanie Q Ko, MBBS MPH · National University Health Systems

Eligibility

Min Age
21 Years
Sex
ALL
Healthy Volunteers
No

Timeline & Regulatory

Start
2021-01-18
Primary Completion
2023-05-18
Completion
2023-06-18

Countries

  • Singapore

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 NCT04330378 on ClinicalTrials.gov