Fewer emergency department visits for older multimorbid patients through interprofessional collaboration: Insights...

The WHO has proposed interprofessional collaboration (IPC) as a promising health care reform to adapt to future healthcare challenges. Among these challenges are a shortage of healthcare professionals, patients becoming more complex due to multimorbidity, and increased use of emergency department services, which could become a bottleneck. Studies investigating the effect of IPC on patient outcomes show mixed results. One promising collaborative practice is the Intensive Collaboration Ward (ICW): which has previously shown promising patient-related outcomes during hospital stay such as shorter length of hospital stay and fewer medical consultations.

This retrospective cohort study, studies the effects after hospital stay, and included patients from two previous studies on the ICW and acquired new follow-up data on one ICW group and two control groups. The primary outcome was the number of emergency department visits within six months of discharge. The secondary outcome was the number of outpatient clinic visits within six months of discharge. Outcomes were analysed using a negative binomial regression.

A total of 490 patients were included, 200 in the ICW group, 51 in control group A and 239 in control group B. Patients in the ICW group had significantly less emergency department (0.16 (95%-CI 0.10-0.25) vs 0.41 (95%-CI 0.27-0.63)) and outpatient clinic visits (0.82 (95%-CI 0.62-1.07) vs 1.67 (95%-CI 1.27-2.20) compared to the control group.

This study provides further evidence of the potential positive impact of IPC on future healthcare challenges, namely reducing the emergency department use and outpatient clinic visits.