Faculty Bibliography

BACKGROUND:Home health care (HHC) is a leading form of home and community-based services for persons with dementia (PWD). Nurses are the primary providers of HHC; however, little is known of nursing care delivery and quality. OBJECTIVE:The objective of this study was to examine the association between continuity of nursing care in HHC and rehospitalization among PWD. RESEARCH DESIGN/METHODS:This is a retrospective cohort study using multiple years (2010-2015) of HHC assessment, administrative, and human resources data from a large urban not-for-profit home health agency. SUBJECTS/METHODS:This study included 23,886 PWD receiving HHC following a hospitalization. MEASURES/METHODS:Continuity of nursing care was calculated using the Bice and Boxerman method, which considered the number of total visits, nurses, and visits from each nurse during an HHC episode. The outcome was all-cause rehospitalization during HHC. Risk-adjusted logistic regression was used for analysis. RESULTS:Approximately 24% of PWD were rehospitalized. The mean continuity of nursing care score was 0.56 (SD=0.33). Eight percent of PWD received each nursing visit from a different nurse (no continuity), and 26% received all visits from one nurse during an HHC episode (full continuity). Compared with those receiving high continuity of nursing care (third tertile), PWD receiving low (first tertile) or moderate (second tertile) continuity of nursing care had an adjusted odds ratio of 1.33 (95% confidence interval: 1.25-1.46) and 1.30 (95% confidence interval: 1.22-1.43), respectively, for being rehospitalized. CONCLUSIONS:Wide variations exist in continuity of nursing care to PWD. Consistency in nurse staff when providing HHC visits to PWD is critical for preventing rehospitalizations.

BACKGROUND:In home health care, language barriers are understudied. Language barriers between patients and providers are known to affect a variety of patient outcomes. How a patient's language preference influences hospital readmission risk from home health care has yet to be determined. OBJECTIVE:To determine if home care patients' language preference is associated with their risk for hospital readmission from home health care within 30 days of hospital discharge. DESIGN/METHODS:Retrospective cross-sectional study of hospital readmissions from an urban home health care agency's administrative records and the national electronic home health care record for the United States, captured between 2010 and 2015. SETTING/METHODS:New York City, New York, USA. PARTICIPANTS/METHODS:The dataset comprised 90,221 post-hospitalization patients and 6.5 million home health care visits. METHODS:First, a Chi-square test was used to determine if there were significant differences in crude readmission rates based on language group. Inverse probability of treatment weighting was used to adjust for significant differences in known hospital readmission risk factors between to examine all-cause hospital readmission during a home health care stay. The final matched sample included 87,561 patients with a language preference of English, Spanish, Russian, Chinese, or Korean. English-speaking patients were considered the comparison group to the non-English speaking patients. A Marginal Structural Model was applied to estimate the impact of non-English language preference against English language preference on rehospitalization. The results of the marginal structural model were expressed as an odds ratio of likelihood of readmission to the hospital from home health care. RESULTS:Home health patients with a non-English language preference had a higher hospital readmission risk than English-speaking patients. Crude readmission rate for the limited English proficiency patients was 20.4% (95% CI, 19.9-21.0%) overall compared to 18.5% (95% CI, 18.7-19.2%) for English speakers (p < 0.001). Being a non-English-speaking patient was associated with an odds ratio of 1.011 (95% CI, 1.004-1.018) in increased hospital readmission rates from home health care (p = 0.001). There were also statistically significant differences in readmission rate by language group (p < 0.001), with Korean speakers having the lowest rate and Spanish speakers having the highest, when compared to English speakers. CONCLUSIONS:People with a non-English language preference have a higher readmission rate from home health care. Hospital and home healthcare agencies may need specialized care coordination services to reduce readmission risk for these patients. Tweetable abstract: A new US-based study finds that home care patients with language barriers are at higher risk for hospital readmission.

BACKGROUND:Standalone thoracoscopic surgical ablation may be more effective than catheter ablation in patients with long-standing persistent atrial fibrillation. OBJECTIVES:To determine whether or not surgical ablation is clinically superior to catheter ablation as the first-line treatment strategy in long-standing persistent atrial fibrillation. DESIGN:This was a prospective, multicentre, randomised control trial. SETTING:Four NHS tertiary centres in England. PARTICIPANTS:Adults with long-standing persistent atrial fibrillation, who had European Heart Rhythm Association symptom scores > 2 and who were naive to previous catheter ablation or thoracic/cardiac surgery. INTERVENTIONS:Minimally invasive thoracoscopic surgical ablation and conventional catheter ablation (control intervention). MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES:The primary outcome was freedom from atrial fibrillation/tachycardia ≥ 30 seconds after a single procedure without antiarrhythmic drugs (class 1C/3) at 1 year, excluding a 3-month blanking period. The secondary outcomes include the intervention-related major complication rate; clinical success (≥ 75% reduction in arrhythmia burden); and changes in symptoms, quality of life and cost-effectiveness. METHODS: = 60). An implanted loop recorder provided continuous cardiac monitoring following ablation. Follow-up visits were at 3, 6, 9 and 12 months. Loop recorder data were reviewed monthly by a physiologist who was blinded to the randomisation outcome. RESULTS: = 0.02). LIMITATIONS:This study was conducted in four highly specialised cardiology centres that have substantial experience in both treatment modalities; therefore, the results may not be widely generalisable. The study was not powered to detect small differences in efficacy. CONCLUSIONS:We found no evidence to suggest that standalone thoracoscopic surgical ablation outcomes were superior to catheter ablation outcomes in achieving freedom from atrial arrhythmia after a single procedure without antiarrhythmic drugs. Moreover, surgical ablation is associated with a longer hospital stay, smaller improvements in quality of life and higher health-care costs than catheter ablation (standard care therapy). FUTURE WORK:Evaluation of the impact of ablation treatments on sinus rhythm maintenance and quality of life with extended follow-up to 3 years. Model-based economic analysis to estimate long-term benefits, harms and costs of surgical and catheter ablation compared with antiarrhythmic drug therapy in long-standing persistent atrial fibrillation patients. TRIAL REGISTRATION:Current Controlled Trials ISRCTN18250790 and ClinicalTrials.gov NCT02755688. FUNDING:; Vol. 8, No. 18. See the NIHR Journals Library website for further project information.

BACKGROUND:Over the last decade, increasing numbers of emergency department attendances and an even greater increase in emergency admissions have placed severe strain on the bed capacity of the National Health Service (NHS) of the United Kingdom. The result has been overcrowded emergency departments with patients experiencing long wait times for admission to an appropriate hospital bed. Nevertheless, scheduling issues can still result in significant underutilization of bed capacity. Bed occupancy rates may not correlate well with bed availability. More accurate and reliable long-term prediction of bed requirements will help anticipate the future needs of a hospital's catchment population, thus resulting in greater efficiencies and better patient care. OBJECTIVE:This study aimed to evaluate widely used automated time-series forecasting techniques to predict short-term daily nonelective bed occupancy at all trusts in the NHS. These techniques were used to develop a simple yet accurate national health system-level forecasting framework that can be utilized at a low cost and by health care administrators who do not have statistical modeling expertise. METHODS:Bed occupancy models that accounted for patterns in occupancy were created for each trust in the NHS. Daily nonelective midnight trust occupancy data from April 2011 to March 2017 for 121 NHS trusts were utilized to generate these models. Forecasts were generated using the three most widely used automated forecasting techniques: exponential smoothing; Seasonal Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average; and Trigonometric, Box-Cox transform, autoregressive moving average errors, and Trend and Seasonal components. The NHS Modernisation Agency's recommended forecasting method prior to 2020 was also replicated. RESULTS:The accuracy of the models varied on the basis of the season during which occupancy was forecasted. For the summer season, percent root-mean-square error values for each model remained relatively stable across the 6 forecasted weeks. However, only the trend and seasonal components model (median error=2.45% for 6 weeks) outperformed the NHS Modernisation Agency's recommended method (median error=2.63% for 6 weeks). In contrast, during the winter season, the percent root-mean-square error values increased as we forecasted further into the future. Exponential smoothing generated the most accurate forecasts (median error=4.91% over 4 weeks), but all models outperformed the NHS Modernisation Agency's recommended method prior to 2020 (median error=8.5% over 4 weeks). CONCLUSIONS:It is possible to create automated models, similar to those recently published by the NHS, which can be used at a hospital level for a large national health care system to predict nonelective bed admissions and thus schedule elective procedures.