Geriatric Transitional Care for Older Patients Discharged From the Emergency Department: Impact on Early Readmissions

The aim of this study is to evaluate the impact of transitional care initiated by Mobile Geriatrics Team (MGTs) at the time of the ED visit on the incidence of early readmissions, on medical journey and autonomy within 6 months after the ED visit, for adults aged 75 or older and considered at risk for early readmission. This is a multicenter, prospective, controlled, non-randomized quasi-experimental study. Inclusion criteria are age 75 years and more, returning home after an ED visit, with a Triage Risk Screening Tool (TRST) score ≥ 2. Exclusion criteria are living in nursing home, being under legal guardianship or incapacity to consent. All participants will provide a written consent after receiving oral and written information. Participants with language barrier, severe cognitive or psychiatric disorders may be included provided that a relative is physically present at the time of the ED visit. Otherwise they will not be included. The study protocol has been submitted for approval to the ethic committee. Five centers (two university hospitals, three regional hospitals) work on an in-hospital strategy and do not perform transitional care. After identifying the patient at risk, the in-hospital MGT solely provides usual recommendations at the time of the ED visit, without offering home-based intervention or coordination with community actors. The participants included in these centers will form the control group.

Seven centers (three university hospitals, four regional hospitals) work on an transitional care method. These centers have an in and out-hospital MGT that carry out geriatric assessment, offer home-visits if necessary, and have a hospital-community coordination for the management of older patients. This coordination is defined by either regular joint clinical meetings, joint visits, shared professionals, or a shared information system. After identification of the at-risk patient, the first step in management consists in a telephone call by the GMT to the patient or his family and primary care professionals within six days of his return home. Depending on the geriatric assessment performed and the coordination organization specific to each center, multidisciplinary interventions can then be proposed and deployed. The patients included in these centers will form the intervention group.

All 12 centers (intervention and control) meet the following criteria for a standardized in-hospital management during the ED visit, including (i) identification of patients at risk based on clinical characteristics or identification scores with a procedure for reporting to the in-hospital GMT; (ii) a multidisciplinary GMT mobilized in the ED for patients at risk providing a standardized geriatric assessment; (iii) a discharge procedure with at least a medical report and referral to the general practitioner.

The principal investigator and the scientific committee will regularly verify that centers continue to meet the conditions of the group it is allocated.

After inclusion, the participants will benefit from the usual care specific to the inclusion center where they were recruited. In the intervention group, GMT intervention initiation consists in an early, standardized telephone call between D1 and D6 for each participant. To respect a pragmatic approach, the intervention of the MGT and the out-of-hospital management strategy are deliberately not standardized in order to evaluate the hospital-community coordination fitting each territory .

Clinical data will be collected at baseline and during follow-up at three (M3) and six (M6) months (Figure 1). The data collected at baseline during the ED visit (D1) by the MGT. This evaluation will be based on the patients' questioning and the medical record. If deemed necessary, the GMT may also rely on information transmitted by a relative or the general practitioner in order to cross-check the information, as is done routinely. The data relative to socio demographic items are age, sex; autonomy in the week prior to the ED visit using the Activities of Daily Living (ADL) and Instrumental Activities of Daily Living (IADL) scales (18,19), self-reported difficulty related to housing, identification of relatives, family and professional caregivers preexisting the ED visit; the nutritional risk using the Mini Nutritional Assessment - Short form (MNA-SF) scale in its alternative version with measurement of calf circumference (20); the screening for cognitive disorders with the Abbreviated Mental Test 4 (AMT4) scale (21) and suggestive clinical diagnosis in the mild, moderate or severe stage, according to the 5th edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical manual of Mental disorders (DSM-V) criteria; the comorbidity level assessed the Charlson index (22) and the number of drugs in the patient's usual treatment; data on the ED visit that including duration the visit in hours and main diagnosis collected from medical records; the history of ED visits or hospitalizations in the previous month and the existence of a regular medical monitoring by the general practitioner (twice a year) or a geriatric team (previously hospitalized in a geriatric wards or appointment with a geriatrician).

One independent investigator will perform follow-up telephone interviews in both groups at M3 and M6 to precise the vital status, place of living (home, nursing home), ADL and IADL, interventions of professional and non-professional caregivers. In addition for participants in the intervention group the independent investigator will identify at M6 the MGT's actions after discharge from ED based on the MGT's medical record including the number and duration of telephone calls and home visits, the coordination with community professionals (medical appointment, rehabilitation care, request for social worker).

The primary endpoint will be the incidence of readmission to an ED between seven (D7) to thirty (D30) days after discharge from the ED visit leading to inclusion in the study, regardless of the reason for admission. This data will be collected from the National Health Data System (NHDS), thus allowing the identification of admissions to an ED on a national level and not exclusively in the centers participating in the research. Very early readmissions (from D1 to D6) will not be taken into account in the primary endpoint, as the time to first intervention in interventional group is a maximum of six days in the framework of the research protocol. Moreover, these very early readmissions are most often motivated by a rapid deterioration of the initial pathology, a diagnostic error or a possible side effect of a therapy (23). Hospital-community transitional care is not intended to avoid this type of very early readmission. The ED visits between D1 and D6 and after D30 will be collected in NHDS as secondary endpoints. The number of ED visits, unplanned hospitalizations and the time duration between inclusion and the first outcome will be also considered.