A new category in the Global Neurotrauma Blog – Featured Articles – will offer readership insight into the multiple fields related to neurotraumatology. Contributions to this section aim to raise awareness of complex issues while informing the latest news, innovation, clinical guidelines and other relevant findings for the AMN community.
IMPLEMENTATION OF A NEUROTRAUMA HOTLINE FOR POST-HOSPITAL CONTINUITY OF CARE
Background: There are 4.8 million emergency department (ED) visits for traumatic brain injury (TBI) annually in the United States. Many of these patients do not receive educational information or follow-up care.
Aims of the study: Our institution implemented a Neurotrauma Hotline for TBI patients. This study describes our implementation and utilization of a Neurotrauma Hotline at a Level I trauma center.
Methods: Callers and outcomes of calls to the hotline over a 12-month period were analyzed. Correlation analysis was done to assess relationship between hotline calls and TBI clinic volumes.
Results: There were 1205 calls to the hotline. Calls were most commonly from internal providers or patients, with 338 repeat callers. The call reason was frequently an appointment (36.8%) or advice (32.1%). There were 334 TBI clinic visits, and however, there was no statistically significant correlation between number of hotline calls and number of clinic visits (r = .417; P = .177).
Conclusions: There was widespread utilization of our hotline. Other institutions wishing to adopt similar practices can expect that the majority of calls will be for appointment scheduling or clinical advice. Further work is needed to determine whether implementation of a Neurotrauma Hotline improves resource utilization and patient outcomes.
Keywords: care coordination; hotline; traumatic brain injury.
© 2019 John Wiley & Sons A/S. Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
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