Generalist vs specialist acute medical admissions - What is the impact of moving towards acute medical subspecialty admissions on efficacy of care provision?

Smyth, Hannah; Gorey, Sarah; O'Keeffe, Hannah; Beirne, Joanna; Kelly, S.; Clifford, Cathal; Kerr, Hilary; Mulroy, Martin; Ahern, Tomás

doi:10.1016/j.ejim.2021.12.007

Cited by 7 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 22 publications

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“…Most recently, Smyth et al studied the effects of an admission program where a relevant subspecialist's team attended the patient instead of the team of the admitting subspecialist. They found a prolonged length of stay but without significant impact on mortality and readmissions when patients were assigned to a relevant subspecialist [12].…”

Section: Open Accessmentioning

confidence: 98%

Relevant vs non-relevant subspecialist for patients hospitalised in internal medicine at a local hospital: which is better? A retrospective cohort study

Berg

Hurtig

Steinsbekk

2022

BMC Health Serv Res

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Background Studies of the treatment of patients in-hospital with a specific diagnosis show that physicians with a subspecialisation relevant to this diagnosis can provide a better quality of care. However, studies including patients with a range of diagnoses show a more negligible effect of being attended by a relevant subspecialist. This project aimed to study a more extensive set of patients and diagnoses in an environment where the subspecialist present could be controlled. Thus, this study investigated whether being attended by a physician with a subspeciality relevant to the patient’s primary diagnosis was prospectively associated with readmission, in-hospital mortality, or length of stay compared to a physician with a subspeciality not relevant to the patient’s primary diagnosis. Methods We have conducted a retrospective register-based study of 11,059 hospital admissions across 9 years at a local hospital in south-eastern Norway, where it was possible to identify the physician attending the patients at the beginning of the stay. The outcomes studied were emergency readmissions to the same ward within 30 days, any in-hospital mortality and the total length of stay. The patients admitted were matched with the consultant(s) responsible for their treatment. Then, the admissions were divided into two groups according to their primary diagnosis. Was their diagnosis within the subspeciality of the attending consultant (relevant subspecialist) or not (non-relevant subspecialist). The two groups were then compared using bivariable and multivariable models adjusted for patient characteristics, comorbidities, diagnostic group and physician sex. Results A relevant subspecialist was present during the first 3 days in 8058 (73%) of the 11,059 patient cases. Patients attended to by a relevant subspecialist had an odds ratio (OR) of 0.91 (95% confidence interval 0.76 to 1.09) for being readmitted and 0.71 (0.48 to 1.04) for dying in the hospital and had a length of stay that was 0.18 (− 0.07 to 0.42) days longer than for those attended to by a non-relevant subspecialist. Conclusions This study found that patients attended by a relevant subspecialist did not have a significantly different outcome to those attended by a non-relevant subspecialist.

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Section: Open Accessmentioning

confidence: 98%