Abstract
Purpose/Objective: The Community-based Care Transitions Program (CCTP) defined a broad spectrum of interventions and services for elderly patients at high risk of hospital readmission. The purposes for a CCTP as developed by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services are to improve transitions of beneficiaries from the inpatient hospital setting to other care settings, to improve quality of care, to reduce readmissions for high-risk beneficiaries, and to document measurable savings. The goals for this CCTP initiative were as follows: achievement of a 20% reduction in the 30-day all-cause readmission rate across all partner hospitals compared with baseline; reduction in the 30-day all-cause readmission rate among the high-risk cohort served; and achievement of the target volumes for full enrollment.
Primary Practice Settings: The partnership included acute care institutions and community-based care organizations that have been involved with care transition programs for years and have a long history of working collaboratively to provide services to a largely low-income, underserved, and ethnically and racially diverse target population.
Findings/Conclusions: The program successfully transitioned to full operation within the first year of inception. To date, the partnership of the acute hospital setting and the community-based organizations has reached and provided services to nearly 8,000 total individuals, surpassing our target enrollment goal. To date, the readmission rate has decreased to 12.5%, which is an 11% decline since inception of the program.
Implications for Case Management Practice: The collaboration of health care providers, social workers, nurse practitioners, physicians, community pharmacists, and the visiting nurses is integral to a successful transition from hospital to home. Home visits by the transition facilitators allowed for the coordination of a multitude of services in the community, including those previously available to patients in the past that have rarely been accessed. Including a pharmacist on the team provided teaching regarding medication adherence, medication management, and pharmacy services, which added to interventions to decrease future hospitalizations.