Improving older people’s experiences and safety at transitions of care: the PACT mixed-methods study including RCT

Background Transitions from hospital to home are a risky time for older people (aged 75 years and older). Unplanned and often avoidable hospital re-admissions are therefore high in this group. This research aimed to understand if increased involvement of older people in their care in hospital would improve the safety and experience of care transitions. Objectives In six work packages we set out to: understand patient and carer involvement in and experience of care transitions explore staff experiences of delivering good transitional care develop and validate a new measure (the Partners at Care Transitions Measure) to assess patient experience and safety during care transitions create a theory and logic model to inform the co-designed transitions intervention followed by a formative evaluation test the feasibility of delivering a trial to evaluate the intervention evaluate the clinical- and cost-effectiveness of the transitions intervention with a parallel process evaluation. Design Qualitative methods (1 and 2), literature reviewing, Delphi techniques and validation testing (3), co-design (4), cluster feasibility trial (5) and cluster randomised controlled trial (6). Settings National Health Service acute hospital trusts, general practices, patients and carer homes across the north of England, United Kingdom. Participants Patients aged 75 years and older and their caregivers. National Health Service staff working in acute National Health Service trusts on wards delivering the intervention. Intervention ‘Your Care Needs You’ intervention to support patient and carer involvement in hospital care in preparation for returning home. This comprised fixed components: a booklet, an advice sheet for managing at home and a film; and flexible components: ongoing staff involvement of patients through multiple approaches. Implementation included a nominated lead, staff training and posters. Main outcome measures Primary outcome was unplanned 30-day hospital re-admissions. Secondary outcomes included: unplanned 60- and 90-day hospital re-admissions; quality of transition; health-related quality of life (EuroQol-5 Dimensions, five-level version); and self-reported healthcare resource use. Data sources National Health Service Secondary Use Services data and Hospital Episodes data for work package 2 and routinely recorded National Health Service acute trust hospital data on re-admissions for work packages 5 and 6. Review methods Systematic narrative review for preparatory work on patient involvement; narrative meta review of transitions interventions; scoping review of transitions measures. Results Work package 1: Six themes relating to patient experience of care transitions. Patient involvement in hospital care found to be challenging ‘work’ that was often invisible to staff. Work package 2: National Health Service staff reported that high-quality care transitions were facilitated primarily through trust and strong relationships. Work package 3: A measure of quality and safety of care transitions (Partners at Care Transitions Measure) developed and validated with good internal reliability and internal consistency. Work package 4: An intervention called ‘Your Care Needs You’ that required revisions to support implementation. Work package 5: Primary outcome data were collected for 90% of participants. Follow-up questionnaire response rates were lower than anticipated (75% vs. 85%). Information on the acceptability, usability and implementation of the intervention informed iterations to the intervention and implementation package. Work package 6: 4947 participants from 39 hospital wards took part in the main trial. Six hundred and thirteen participants from 35 wards took part in the nested cohort. No differences were observed in the primary outcome of unplanned re-admission (Y/N) at 30 days post discharge [17% experienced re-admission within 30 days in the ‘Your Care Needs You’ group, 18% in care-as-usual, odds ratio: (0.93; 95% confidence interval, 0.78 to 1.10; p = 0.372)], and also at 60 and 90 days post discharge but all results were in favour of the intervention with a reduction in total re-admissions of 13% over 90 days [incidence rate ratio: 0.87 (0.76 to 0.99), p = 0.039]. There was a statistically significant reduction in Partners at Care Transitions Measure safety concerns at 30 days post discharge. The intervention is likely to be cost-effective. Limitations The main trial was conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic which exacerbated staffing challenges and limited opportunities to enhance and support implementation of the intervention. Participant recruitment to the nested study was challenging, resulting in fewer patients than planned and a less diverse sample than that included in the primary cohort. Therefore, while our primary cohort is representative of the patients in the hospital during the trial period, the nested cohort may suffer from some bias. Conclusions The ‘Your Care Needs You’ intervention offers a way to support staff and patients/families to facilitate greater involvement in care. This research demonstrates that increased involvement in hospital care has the potential to improve safety at transitions. Finding ways to support staff to encourage better patient involvement could lead to even more benefits being realised. Future work Hospitals could consider involving volunteers in supporting greater patient and family involvement. There was some indication that the component of the intervention most favoured was the patient advice for discharge. Trial registration This trial is registered as Current Controlled Trials ISRCTN51154948 (WP5) and ISRCTN17062524 (WP6). Funding This award was funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) Programme Grants for Applied Research programme (NIHR award ref: RP-PG-1214-20017) and is published in full in Programme Grants for Applied Research; Vol. 13, No. 4. See the NIHR Funding and Awards website for further award information.