Impact of geriatric consultation teams on clinical outcome in acute hospitals: a systematic review and meta-analysis

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Abstract

Background

Comprehensive geriatric assessment for older patients admitted to dedicated wards has proven to be beneficial, but the impact of comprehensive geriatric assessment delivered by mobile inpatient geriatric consultation teams remains unclear. This review and meta-analysis aims to determine the impact of inpatient geriatric consultation teams on clinical outcomes of interest in older adults.

Methods

An electronic search of Medline, CINAHL, EMBASE, Web of Science and Invert for English, French and Dutch articles was performed from inception to June 2012. Three independent reviewers selected prospective cohort studies assessing functional status, readmission rate, mortality or length of stay in adults aged 60 years or older. Twelve studies evaluating 4,546 participants in six countries were identified. Methodological quality of the included studies was assessed with the Methodological Index for Non-Randomized Studies.

Results

The individual studies show that an inpatient geriatric consultation team intervention has favorable effects on functional status, readmission and mortality rate. None of the studies found an effect on the length of the hospital stay. The meta-analysis found a beneficial effect of the intervention with regard to mortality rate at 6 months (relative risk 0.66; 95% confidence interval 0.52 to 0.85) and 8 months (relative risk 0.51; confidence interval 0.31 to 0.85) after hospital discharge.

Conclusions

Inpatient geriatric consultation team interventions have a significant impact on mortality rate at 6 and 8 months postdischarge, but have no significant impact on functional status, readmission or length of stay. The reason for the lack of effect on these latter outcomes may be due to insufficient statistical power or the insensitivity of the measuring method for, for example, functional status. The questions of to whom IGCT intervention should be targeted and what can be achieved remain unanswered and require further research.

Trial registration: CRD42011001420 ( http://www.crd.york.ac.uk/PROSPERO)

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Most cited references 25

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Proportion of hospital readmissions deemed avoidable: a systematic review.

Carl van Walraven, Carol Bennett, Alison Jennings … (2011)

Readmissions to hospital are increasingly being used as an indicator of quality of care. However, this approach is valid only when we know what proportion of readmissions are avoidable. We conducted a systematic review of studies that measured the proportion of readmissions deemed avoidable. We examined how such readmissions were measured and estimated their prevalence. We searched the MEDLINE and EMBASE databases to identify all studies published from 1966 to July 2010 that reviewed hospital readmissions and that specified how many were classified as avoidable. Our search strategy identified 34 studies. Three of the studies used combinations of administrative diagnostic codes to determine whether readmissions were avoidable. Criteria used in the remaining studies were subjective. Most of the studies were conducted at single teaching hospitals, did not consider information from the community or treating physicians, and used only one reviewer to decide whether readmissions were avoidable. The median proportion of readmissions deemed avoidable was 27.1% but varied from 5% to 79%. Three study-level factors (teaching status of hospital, whether all diagnoses or only some were considered, and length of follow-up) were significantly associated with the proportion of admissions deemed to be avoidable and explained some, but not all, of the heterogeneity between the studies. All but three of the studies used subjective criteria to determine whether readmissions were avoidable. Study methods had notable deficits and varied extensively, as did the proportion of readmissions deemed avoidable. The true proportion of hospital readmissions that are potentially avoidable remains unclear.

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Should meta-analyses of interventions include observational studies in addition to randomized controlled trials? A critical examination of underlying principles.

Ian Shrier, Jean-François Boivin, Russell Steele … (2007)

Some authors argue that systematic reviews and meta-analyses of intervention studies should include only randomized controlled trials because the randomized controlled trial is a more valid study design for causal inference compared with the observational study design. However, a review of the principal elements underlying this claim (randomization removes the chance of confounding, and the double-blind process minimizes biases caused by the placebo effect) suggests that both classes of study designs have strengths and weaknesses, and including information from observational studies may improve the inference based on only randomized controlled trials. Furthermore, a review of empirical studies suggests that meta-analyses based on observational studies generally produce estimates of effect similar to those from meta-analyses based on randomized controlled trials. The authors found that the advantages of including both observational studies and randomized studies in a meta-analysis could outweigh the disadvantages in many situations and that observational studies should not be excluded a priori.

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Detection of older people at increased risk of adverse health outcomes after an emergency visit: the ISAR screening tool.

S Cardin, S Trépanier, J Verdon … (1999)

To develop a self-report screening tool to identify older people in the emergency department (ED) of a hospital at increased risk of adverse health outcomes, including: death, admission to a nursing home or long-term hospitalization, or a clinically significant decrease in functional status. Prospective (6-month) follow-up study of a cohort of ED patients aged 65 and older. The EDs of four acute-care hospitals in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Community-dwelling patients aged 65 and older who came to the EDs during the weekday shift over a 3-month recruitment period. Patients were excluded if they could not be interviewed either because of their medical condition or because of cognitive impairment and no other informant was available. Measures ascertained at the ED visit included: 27 self-report screening questions on social, physical, and mental risk factors; medical history; use of hospital services, medications, and alcohol; and the Older American Resources and Services (OARS) activities of daily living (ADL) scale. At follow-up, the OARS scale was readministered by telephone, and other adverse health outcomes were ascertained. Among 1673 patients who completed the follow-up measures, 488 (29.2%) had an adverse health outcome. Scale development and selection methods included logistic regression, receiver operating characteristic curves, and expert judgment. The proposed screening tool (ISAR) comprises six self-report questions on functional dependence (premorbid and acute change), recent hospitalization, impaired memory and vision, and polymedication. The tool performed well in the total cohort aged 65 and older, and in sub-groups defined by disposition (admitted or released from ED), language of questionnaire administration (French or English), information source (patient or other), and other characteristics. The ISAR is a short self-report questionnaire that can quickly identify older patients in the ED at increased risk of several adverse health outcomes and those with current disability.

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Author and article information

Journal

Journal ID (nlm-ta): BMC Med

Journal ID (iso-abbrev): BMC Med

Title: BMC Medicine

Publisher: BioMed Central

ISSN (Electronic): 1741-7015

Publication date Collection: 2013

Publication date (Electronic): 22 February 2013

Volume: 11

Page: 48

Affiliations

[1 ]Center for Health Services and Nursing Research, KU Leuven, Kapucijnenvoer 35/4, 3000 Leuven, Belgium

[2 ]Division of Geriatric Medicine, University Hospitals Leuven, Belgium, Herestraat 49, 3000 Leuven, Belgium

[3 ]Center for Outcomes Research, Laboratory for Experimental Surgery, Universitair Ziekenhuis Brussel, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Laarbeeklaan 101, 1090 Brussel, Belgium

[4 ]Center for Metabolic Bone Diseases, University Hospitals Leuven, Herestraat 49, Leuven, 3000, Belgium

Article

Publisher ID: 1741-7015-11-48

DOI: 10.1186/1741-7015-11-48

PMC ID: 3626668

PubMed ID: 23433471

SO-VID: f66ee584-2f3c-4a67-a63a-19ed755640ee

License:

This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Impact of geriatric consultation teams on clinical outcome in acute hospitals: a systematic review and meta-analysis

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Abstract

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Most cited references 25

Proportion of hospital readmissions deemed avoidable: a systematic review.

Should meta-analyses of interventions include observational studies in addition to randomized controlled trials? A critical examination of underlying principles.

Detection of older people at increased risk of adverse health outcomes after an emergency visit: the ISAR screening tool.

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