In accordance with the Institute’s vision for proactive, opportunistic and care delivered in place, Transport PLUS seeks to improve care transitions for older adults discharged from the ED and hospital. Specially-trained emergency medical technicians (EMTs) who are already transporting older adults home from the ED or hospital added two interventions to their services: 1) a home fall safety assessment and 2) a discharge comprehension assessment.
In 2018, the Institute began wrapping up its collaboration with the Mount Sinai Department of Emergency Medicine on the impact of improving Transport PLUS’ processes aimed at increasing the number of home assessments completed and subsequent remediation of identified risks.
With the Institute’s guidance regarding overcoming gaps in education and processes, enrollment in the program increased and 339 EMT/patient encounters were conducted.
The preliminary results of the study showed a statistically-significant decrease in self-reported falls in the Transport PLUS group compared to the control group. Additionally, patient self-reporting of return ED visits found that patients who received the Transport PLUS intervention initially had fewer return ED visits compared with the control group.
In 2019, the Institute is working with Mt. Sinai to interpret and disseminate these important findings, ultimately adapting and incorporating the processes and methods studied into a broader set of models to support an analysis examining the potential total-cost-of-care reductions for value-based Medicare payment models.