Evidence map›Paper›PMID 18208958›Full record

ArticleCanadian family physician Medecin de famille canadien2008

Home-based intermediate care program vs hospitalization: Cost comparison study.

Catherine Deri Armstrong, William E Hogg, Jacques Lemelin, Simone Dahrouge, Carmel Martin, Gary S Viner, Raphael Saginur

Open access · greenAbstract readComparative Study
In one paragraph

Article in Canadian family physician Medecin de famille canadien, 2008. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 6 papers.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
6citing papers in PubMed
2.0field-weighted citation impact, top 12% of its field
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

6 citing papers in PubMed, 16 citations in OpenAlex.

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  6. Integrating Physician Services in the Home: evaluation of an innovative program.Canadian family physician Medecin de famille canadien · 2010
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4 · The record

Corrections and comments

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

7 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.

Catherine Deri ArmstrongDepartment of Economics at the University of Ottawa in Ontario.
William E Hogg
Jacques Lemelin
Simone Dahrouge
Carmel Martin
Gary S Viner
Raphael Saginur
University of Ottawa · CA

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

objectiveTo explore whether a home-based intermediate care program in a large Canadian city lowers the cost of care and to look at whether such home-based programs could be a solution to the increasing demands on Canadian hospitals.

designSingle-arm study with historical controls.

settingDepartment of Family Medicine at the Ottawa Hospital (Civic campus) in Ontario.

participantsPatients requiring hospitalization for acute care. Participants were matched with historical controls based on case-mix, most responsible diagnosis, and level of complexity.

interventionsPlacement in the home-based intermediate care program. Daily home visits from the nurse practitioner and 24-hour access to care by telephone.

main outcome measuresMultivariate regression models were used to estimate the effect of the program on 5 outcomes: length of stay in hospital, cost of care substituted for hospitalization (Canadian dollars), readmission for a related diagnosis, readmission for any diagnosis, and costs incurred by community home-care services for patients following discharge from hospital.

resultsThe outcomes of 43 hospital admissions were matched with those of 363 controls. Patients enrolled in the program stayed longer in hospital (coefficient 3.3 days, P < .001), used more community care services following discharge (coefficient $729, P = .007), and were more likely to be readmitted to hospital within 3 months of discharge (coefficient 17%, P = .012) than patients treated in hospital. Total substituted costs of home-based care were not significantly different from the costs of hospitalization (coefficient -$501, P = .11).

conclusionWhile estimated cost savings were not statistically significant, the limitations of our study suggest that we underestimated these savings. In particular, the economic inefficiencies of a small immature program and the inability to control for certain factors when selecting historical controls affected our results. Further research is needed to determine the economic effect of mature home-based programs.

Indexed as

Health Care CostsAgedChronic DiseaseCosts and Cost AnalysisFemaleHome Care ServicesHospitalizationHumansMaleOntarioRetrospective StudiesUrban Population

Identifiers

PMID18208958
PMCPMC2293319
OpenAlexW2107007491

What OpenQuestion holds

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Registered trials

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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.