Clinical Trials Logo

Clinical Trial Summary

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.


Clinical Trial Description

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. ;


Study Design

Allocation: Randomized, Intervention Model: Parallel Assignment, Masking: Open Label, Primary Purpose: Health Services Research


Related Conditions & MeSH terms


NCT number NCT00670865
Study type Interventional
Source St. Michael's Hospital, Toronto
Contact
Status Completed
Phase N/A
Start date May 2008
Completion date July 2008

See also
  Status Clinical Trial Phase
Completed NCT01207180 - Discharge Planning for Elderly Patients in the Emergency Department: Use of a Brief Phone Call After Discharge to Improve Medication Utilization and Physician Follow-up N/A
Not yet recruiting NCT05501314 - Remote Home Monitoring Acute Pancreatitis N/A
Completed NCT02581800 - Effect and Experience of PreHomeCare of Preterm Infants Using Telecommunication and Smartphone Application N/A
Completed NCT03223584 - Exploratory Study to Inventory Opportunities to Optimize Continuity of Pharmacotherapy at Hospital Discharge N/A
Completed NCT02295319 - The Impact of Individual-based Discharges From Acute Admission Units to Home N/A
Completed NCT05556707 - Symptom Clusters and Risk Factors of COVID-19 Patients
Terminated NCT03455985 - Effectiveness of a Diabetes Focused Discharge Order Set Among Poorly Controlled Hospitalized Patients Transitioning to Glargine U300 Insulin N/A
Completed NCT01091688 - The Impact of Just-in-time Information on Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) Discharges N/A
Completed NCT03810534 - Connect-Home Clinical Trial N/A
Completed NCT02532296 - Improving Hospital-to-Home Care Transitions for High-risk Younger Adult Patients N/A
Completed NCT01378234 - Enhanced Discharge Planning Program -- Prospective N/A
Recruiting NCT04077281 - Improving Medication Prescribing-Related Outcomes for Vulnerable Elderly In Transitions N/A
Completed NCT03436940 - Comparison Between Two Strategies of Discharge Planning for the Reduction of Short Term Hospital Readmissions N/A
Completed NCT01565785 - Evaluating a New Way to Prepare Parents of Hospitalized Children for Discharge and Management of Child at Home N/A
Recruiting NCT03786250 - Comprehensive Geriatric Assessment in an Emergency Department
Completed NCT02533856 - Trial of Emergency Department Discharge With Enhanced Transitions of Care Compared to Usual Care N/A
Withdrawn NCT00364117 - Remote Presence Timely Discharge Management Phase 2/Phase 3
Completed NCT01503554 - Combined Social Worker and Pharmacist Transitional Care Program N/A
Not yet recruiting NCT04351425 - Early Weaning of Preterm Newborn From Incubator to Cot at 1400 Grams N/A