Completed Research Project
Reducing the Early Re-Presentation of Older Adults to Hospital after Discharge from an Acute Assessment Unit: Phase One, Determining Predictors
Investigators: Toye C, Williamson J, Young J, Matthews A, Hill A, Nolan L
Funding: Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital and Edith Cowan University ($55,628)
Administering institution: Edith Cowan University
Older adults (aged 65 or older) are frequently admitted to the Acute Assessment Unit at a large, metropolitan, public hospital in Western Australia. This unit is designed for the rapid assessment, monitoring, and treatment of patients who are then either discharged home within approximately 72 hours or transferred to a longer stay ward within the same timeframe. Sometimes these older adults re-present to hospital soon after discharge from the unit. Our study investigated the early, unplanned re-presentation (within 28 days) of older adults who were discharged home or into residential care.
Stage One of the study aimed to identify likely local predictors of early, unplanned, re-presentation to the discharging hospital by exploring and describing perceptions of these re-presentations in interviews with elderly patients, their family carers, and health care workers. Changes in practice that might have the potential to minimise these presentations were also explored
Stage Two of the study described the proportion of older adults (aged 65 years or older) discharged from the Acute Assessment Unit from June 2002 to June 2004 who re-presented, early (within 28 days), to any local, metropolitan, public hospital emergency department in that 2 year time period. The study also described the extent to which likely predictors of early hospital re-presentation of older adults, identified in Stage One of the study and/or in the literature review, and for which local data were available, were confirmed as being relevant in the local context.
