Patients with COPD, require medication adherence and inhaler education post-hospitalization to reduce the misuse of prescriptions leading to rehospitalization. Many individuals with COPD experience high rates of acute care visits after the initial hospitalizations which contributes to unnecessary healthcare costs.
This has driven the development of Medicare’s Hospital Readmission Reduction Program (HRRP) to incentivize hospitals to implement Transitions of Care (TOC) for high risk, frequently hospitalized adults with chronic conditions. However, currently the HRRP program is not meeting the needs of patients who are continuing to misuse their inhalers.
To help alleviate the problem, AHRQ has released information on their digital healthcare research project “TELE-TOC: Telehealth Education Leveraging Electronic Transitions of Care for COPD Patients”.
AHRQ awarded $1,999,997 to the research team at the University of Chicago to implement and evaluate “TELE-DOC”, an in-home intervention, that will use telehealth to conduct virtual visits after hospital discharge with members of the pharmacy team.
Specific aims of the research are to:
- Design, develop, and test evidence-based virtual pharmacist visits to address medication use, skills training, and self-management needs for patients with COPD using user-centered design methods
- Implement and evaluate TELE-DOC as compared to ambulatory visits for patients with COPD enrolled in the existing COPD TOC program, using a type II hybrid effectiveness implementation randomized controlled trial
- Develop a dissemination strategy for nationwide dissemination of TELE-DOC for other COPD TOC programs
The research team anticipates that the virtual visits with their pharmacy team will be an accessible option for patients after leaving the hospital and will result in improved medication use and outcomes among COPD patients at high risk for readmission.
If proven to be successful, the team will develop a dissemination strategy and roadmap with national stakeholders for a nationwide adoption of the TELE-DOC program. Go to https://digital.ahrq.gov/funded-projects/ttele-toc-telehealth-education-leveraging-electronic-transitions-care-copd-patients for more details on the research.