Improving follow-up in hospitalised children

Abstract

Objective: To improve the clinic follow-up rate of paediatric inpatients in a tertiary care hospital.

Patients and methods: Inpatients who received pulmonary consultations from July 2007 to June 2008 at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center were eligible for this quality-improvement project. Multiple interventions were introduced to improve follow-up in our subspecialty clinic. A χ(2) test for association was used to assess the dependence between the clinic follow-up rate and the type of care coordination intervention. We hypothesised that generalisable care coordination interventions would result in improvements.

Results: Two hundred and eleven patients were included. Two interventions were independently associated with improvements in the hospital follow-up rate. When a reminder to follow-up in the pulmonary clinic was inserted into the hospital discharge summary (partial intervention), the clinic follow-up rate improved from 27% to 55%. When the follow-up appointments were made for the families, with the appointments' noted in the discharge summaries, and automated appointment reminder phone calls were provided (full intervention), the follow-up rate improved further from 55% to 80%. The full intervention, when compared with no intervention, improved the clinic follow-up rate from 27% to 80%.

Conclusion: Establishing clinic appointments for patients and providing appointment reminders increases the hospital follow-up rate for hospitalised children in outpatient clinics.