Consensus methodology to investigate appropriate referral criteria for inpatients to be offered a transfer of care service as they are discharged home.

Abstract

Hamde Nazar Gregory Maniatopoulos Efi Mantzourani Neil Watson 1School of Pharmacy, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK; 2Institute of Health and Society, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK; 3School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, Cardiff University, Cardiff, Wales, UK; 4Pharmacy Services, Royal Victoria Infirmary NHS Hospital Trust, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK Introduction An emerging clinical role for community pharmacists is to become actively involved in the follow-up care of patients who are discharged back into the community (transfer of care services) by promoting better medication adherence and by contributing to the safe, effective, and efficient use of medication. Recent research highlights how this extended role of community pharmacists could help to reduce drug-related adverse events, unnecessary health provider visits, hospitalizations, and readmissions while strengthening integrated primary care delivery across the healthcare system. Risk prediction models have been developed to effectively target the offering of postdischarge interventions to reduce patient hospital readmission. These tools aim to standardize the offer and provision of services that could otherwise be dependent upon professional and clinical expertise, knowledge and bias. Despite over 30 years of work to develop and optimize a risk prediction tool, there is limited consensus on the fundamental patient parameters that are most useful to target delivery of readmission-reducing interventions. A consensus methodological approach was adopted in this study to address a gap in the literature by identifying appropriate referral criteria of hospital inpatients for follow-up care in the primary care setting.