Automated Versus Conventional Hospital Discharge Summaries and Prescriptions

Study Overview
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Brief Summary
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The purpose of this study is to determine whether a semi-automated electronic patient discharge summary program leads to increased community physician and housestaff satisfaction and patient outcomes as compared to conventional discharge reports.

Detailed Description
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For patients hospitalized with an acute illness, the days following discharge constitute a critical period. Patients must adjust to changes in their medications, follow up with family doctors and other specialists and know what symptoms should prompt a return to hospital. The community physicians who follow them rely on information from their hospitalization to facilitate this transition, and provide continuity of care. Communication between hospital and community physicians is essential to this process, and has traditionally been accomplished by a dictated discharge summary. Previous studies have shown that while dictated discharge summaries can be inaccurate, incomplete, or untimely, computer generated summaries are produced more quickly and accurately. Moreover, database-generated discharge summaries are preferred by physicians in the community. We have designed a web-based computer program with quality assurance features that automatically generates timely discharge summaries. We aim to study this program over a 2 month period on our general medicine unit by means of a randomized controlled trial. Our hypothesis is that community physicians will prefer the computer generated summaries, over the standard dictated summaries. If effective, our system could be implemented more widely, and would stand to improve communication with community physicians, continuity of care, and patient safety.

Official Title
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Automated Versus Conventional Hospital Discharge Summaries and Prescriptions: A Randomized Controlled Trial

Conditions
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Patient Discharge, Continuity of Patient Care, Medical Records Systems, Computerized, Hospital Information Systems

Intervention / Treatment
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* Other: Electronic discharge summary system


Participation Criteria
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Eligibility Criteria
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Inclusion Criteria: Hospitalization on General Internal Medicine ward at St. Michael's Hospital Exclusion Criteria: Transfer to another service Death during admission Remains in hospital past dates specified in study protocol
Sexes Eligible for Study
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All

Accepts Healthy Volunteers
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No

Study Plan
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How is the study designed?
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Design Details

Primary Purpose: Health Services Research
Allocation: Randomized
Intervention Model: Parallel Assignment
Masking: None (Open Label)


Arms and Interventions

| Participant Group/Arm | Intervention/Treatment |
| --- | --- |
| Experimental: eDischarge<br>The eDischarge arm will consist of two teams on the General Internal Medicine ward at St. Michael's Hospital who have been randomly assigned to use the electronic discharge summary program. | Other: Electronic discharge summary system<br>* The customized electronic discharge summary program will be used to generate patient discharge summaries.<br>|
| No Intervention: Traditional<br>The traditional arm will consist of two teams on the General Internal Medicine ward at St. Michael's Hospital who have been randomly assigned to use traditional, dictated discharge summaries. | |

What is the study measuring?
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Primary Outcome Measures

| Outcome Measure | Measure Description | Time Frame |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Primary care physician satisfaction from satisfaction score assessment form with 100-mm visual analogue scale |  | Satisfaction score assessment form to be sent one week after patient's discharge from hospital. If form is not returned in 14 days, a reminder and second form will be sent. | 

Secondary Outcome Measures

| Outcome Measure | Measure Description | Time Frame |
| --- | --- | --- |
| St. Michael's Hospital housestaff satisfaction from satisfaction score assessment form with 100-mm visual analogue scale |  | Housestaff will fill out form upon completion of the rotation during which the study has been performed | 
| Completion of specialist outpatient workups at St. Michael's Hospital recommended during course of hospitalization |  | Within the first 30 days of patient's discharge from hospital | 
| Patient visits to Emergency Room at St. Michael's Hospital |  | Within the first 30 days after patient's discharge from hospital | 
| Patient/proxy care transition assessment through the use of the CTM-3. |  | Phone call made to patient or proxy one week after discharge. If patient/proxy is not reached, follow up calls will be made daily until patient/proxy is reached. | 
| Prescribing errors as assessed by comparing discharge summary to inpatient record |  | Upon discharge | 
| Patient readmissions to St. Michael's Hospital |  | Within 30 days of discharge | 

 Terms related to the study
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Keywords Provided by Centre Hospitalier Valida
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Hospitalization, Continuity of care, Discharge summary, Quality improvement, Medical records systems, Hospital information systems