Effectiveness of Transitional Care Services

Today, the National University Hospital System has a variety of transitional / post-discharge care programmes, and patients may be enrolled in more than one. Each of these programmes is run by a different hospital team, so a patient may have to liaise with many parties for their post-discharge care.

The National University Hospital System has designed and is piloting an improved post-discharge care programme called CareHub for patients undergoing cardiac surgery. Recruitment for this pilot will be from 20 April 2016 - approximately late October 2016, and the CareHub team will provide 6 months of post-discharge support. The entire pilot will thus run from 20 April 2016 - April / May 2017.

CareHub is a post-discharge care programme that is designed to streamline and better coordinate current programmes for patients at high risk of readmission. Patients enrolled in CareHub and usual care will receive post-discharge care for six months after discharge. However, patients in CareHub will experience:

(i) Provision of a single point of contact for all the patient's needs, to help patients and their families navigate the healthcare system as well as various programmes available in the hospital and community. Care Coordinator identifies patients and starts working with care team during the inpatient phase, and follows patient through to the post-discharge phase.

(ii) More structured and regular telephone support and checks, to help ease the hospital-to-home transition, as well as to provide more opportunity to verify that patients are adhering to their recommended treatment (which may include e.g. checking that patients have made use of the daycare services CareHub recommended).

(iii) A call center which will operate during office hours, where tele-consult will be available from and nurses/care coordinators.

(iv) A consolidated multi-disciplinary discharge plan, based on the input of all healthcare workers caring for the patient. These include the CareHub coordinator, ward doctor and nurse, heart failure care manager, and allied health professionals, as required.

(v) Early identification and preparation for post-discharge care. Healthcare workers listed in (iv) will participate in a daily in-patient multi-disciplinary ward huddle, to discuss the patient's condition and start early preparation for post-discharge care.

To assess the clinical and cost-effectiveness of CareHub, our team will randomly assign patients to a usual care setting or CareHub setting, and measure clinical outcomes, patient satisfaction, readmissions, and length of stay through 6 months post-discharge in both groups.

Inclusion criteria

• All patients admitted to the cardiac inpatient service post-cardiac surgery

Exclusion criteria

• Patients that do not consent or are unable to consent to be included into CareHub