Abstract
Background:
Developing better acuity models to predict hospital re-admissions is vital to providing high qualitive outpatient palliative care services.
Objective:
Determine if an acuity tool could accurately predict those patients with the highest risk for hospital admission within 30 days following a palliative medicine home visit.
Design:
A retrospective observational study evaluating an outpatient practitioner-administered acuity model to determine how different acuity scores corresponded with specific follow-up intervals.
Setting/Subjects:
The study was conducted in patients’ residences, analyzing home-based outpatient palliative care visits provided by Wellstar Health System clinicians across 4 Georgia counties.
Results:
Two hundred and ninety-one patients were included in our study. 78% of patients did not experience a hospital admission within 30 days following their most recent palliative medicine home visit, while 22% (n = 64) did. The average overall acuity score was 10.93. The average acuity score for the individuals not admitted was 9.66, while the score for those admitted was 15.44.
Conclusion:
The acuity score was a significant predictor of the probability of hospitalization (P < .0001), and the odds of a hospitalization increased by 7.0% for each additional unit in the acuity score.
Keywords
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