Teleneurology Comprehensive Inpatient Consultations Expedite Access to Care and Decreases Hospital Length of Stay.

clinical specialty neurohospitalist outcomes patient outcomes techniques telehealth telemedicine teleneurology

Journal

The Neurohospitalist
ISSN: 1941-8744
Titre abrégé: Neurohospitalist
Pays: United States
ID NLM: 101558199

Informations de publication

Date de publication:
Jul 2021
Historique:
entrez: 24 6 2021
pubmed: 25 6 2021
medline: 25 6 2021
Statut: ppublish

Résumé

While the successful provision of telestroke care has been well documented in the literature, studies on the impact of comprehensive teleneurology service (TN) to hospital measures are lacking. We evaluated 3 traditional health services metrics of hospital performance: time from consult request to consult completion, inpatient length of stay (LOS), and the rate of patients transferred for tertiary care. Medical records (n = 899) from 3 community hospitals and our TN consultation database were retrospectively reviewed during the 2 years before (n = 703, 3 hospitals) and 4 months (n = 2 hospitals) to 2 years (n = 1 hospital) after implementation (n = 196) of a TN program for routine and urgent consult requests. Consult order time, consult completion time, total length of stay and discharge disposition were compared across the pre-TN implementation group, which consisted of in-person consultations and the post-TN implementation group, which consisted of TN consultations only. After TN implementation, median length of stay decreased 28% (3.9 vs. 2.8 days, p < 0.0001) and median time from consult order to consult completion decreased by 74% across all diagnoses (5.8 vs. 1.5 hours, p < 0.0001). There were no significant differences in the percentage of patients discharged home (52.3% vs. 56.1%, p = 0.10) or transferred to tertiary care (6.1% to 9.2%, p = 0.10). Implementation of TN program was associated with significant reductions in LOS and time to consultation completion without an increase in shunting of patients to more advanced facilities. Further research is warranted to confirm these findings in independent cohorts and other models of teleneurology delivery.

Sections du résumé

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE OBJECTIVE
While the successful provision of telestroke care has been well documented in the literature, studies on the impact of comprehensive teleneurology service (TN) to hospital measures are lacking. We evaluated 3 traditional health services metrics of hospital performance: time from consult request to consult completion, inpatient length of stay (LOS), and the rate of patients transferred for tertiary care.
METHODS METHODS
Medical records (n = 899) from 3 community hospitals and our TN consultation database were retrospectively reviewed during the 2 years before (n = 703, 3 hospitals) and 4 months (n = 2 hospitals) to 2 years (n = 1 hospital) after implementation (n = 196) of a TN program for routine and urgent consult requests. Consult order time, consult completion time, total length of stay and discharge disposition were compared across the pre-TN implementation group, which consisted of in-person consultations and the post-TN implementation group, which consisted of TN consultations only.
RESULTS RESULTS
After TN implementation, median length of stay decreased 28% (3.9 vs. 2.8 days, p < 0.0001) and median time from consult order to consult completion decreased by 74% across all diagnoses (5.8 vs. 1.5 hours, p < 0.0001). There were no significant differences in the percentage of patients discharged home (52.3% vs. 56.1%, p = 0.10) or transferred to tertiary care (6.1% to 9.2%, p = 0.10).
CONCLUSIONS CONCLUSIONS
Implementation of TN program was associated with significant reductions in LOS and time to consultation completion without an increase in shunting of patients to more advanced facilities. Further research is warranted to confirm these findings in independent cohorts and other models of teleneurology delivery.

Identifiants

pubmed: 34163548
doi: 10.1177/19418744211000951
pii: 10.1177_19418744211000951
pmc: PMC8182406
doi:

Types de publication

Journal Article

Langues

eng

Pagination

229-234

Informations de copyright

© The Author(s) 2021.

Déclaration de conflit d'intérêts

Declaration of Conflicting Interests: The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

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Auteurs

Robert McCormick (R)

Department of Neurology, Boston Medical Center, Boston University, Boston, MA, USA.

Juan Estrada (J)

Department of Neurology, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA.

Cynthia Whitney (C)

Department of Neurology, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA.

Mona Hinrichsen (M)

Department of Medicine, North Shore Medical Center, Salem, MA, USA.

Patrick T Lee (PT)

Department of Medicine, North Shore Medical Center, Salem, MA, USA.

Adam B Cohen (AB)

Department of Neurology, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD, USA.

Lee Schwamm (L)

Department of Neurology, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA.

Marcelo Matiello (M)

Department of Neurology, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA.

Classifications MeSH