Potentially preventable hospitalizations—The ‘pre‐hospital syndrome’: Retrospective observations from the MonashWatch self‐reported health journey study in Victoria, Australia

RATIONALE, AIMS, AND OBJECTIVES: HealthLinks: Chronic Care is a state‐wide public hospital initiative designed to improve care for cohorts at‐risk of potentially preventable hospitalizations at no extra cost. MonashWatch (MW) is an hospital outreach service designed to optimize admissions in an at‐risk cohort. Telehealth operators make regular phone calls (≥weekly) using the Patient Journey Record System (PaJR). PaJR generates flags based on patient self‐report, alerting to a risk of admission or emergency department attendance. ‘Total flags’ of global health represent concerns about self‐reported general health, medication, and wellness. ‘Red flags’ represent significant disease/symptoms concerns, likely to lead to hospitalization. METHODS: A time series analysis of PaJR phone calls to MW patients with ≥1 acute non‐surgical admissions in a 20‐day time window (10 days pre‐admission and 10 days post‐discharge) between 23 December 2016 and 11 October 2017. Pettitt's hypothesis‐testing homogeneity measure was deployed to analyse Victorian Admitted Episode/Emergency Minimum Datasets and PaJR data. FINDINGS: A MW cohort of 103 patients (mean age 74 ± 15 years; with 59% males) had 263 admissions was identified. Bed days ranged from <1 to 37.3 (mean 5.8 ± 5.8; median 4.1). The MW cohort had 7.6 calls on average in the 20‐day pre‐ and post‐hospital period. Most patients reported significantly increased flags ‘pre‐hospital’ admission: medication issues increased on day 7.0 to 8.5; total flags day 3, worse general health days 2.5 to 1.8; and red flags of disease symptoms increased on day 1. These flags persisted following discharge. DISCUSSION/CONCLUSION: This study identified a ‘pre‐hospital syndrome’ similar to a post‐hospital phase aka the well‐documented ‘post‐hospital syndrome’. There is evidence of a 10‐day ‘pre‐hospital’ window for interventions to possibly prevent or shorten an acute admission in this MW cohort. Further validation in a larger diverse sample is needed.