The Bandung neurosurgery patient outcomes project, Indonesia (Part I): Methods, participant characteristics, and pre‐discharge outcomes

Abstract

A large proportion of patients are being discharged with considerable levels of difficulty in four of the five EQ-5D dimensions. This stresses the importance of providing good follow-up and support of patients and their families.

The Bandung neurosurgery patient outcomes project, Indonesia (Part II): Patient pathways and feasibility and acceptability of telephone follow‐up

“…Of the remaining half admitted for illness, most were admitted because of a brain tumour (73%). The companion paper (Part I) described the more detailed reasons for admission. For more than half of the patients (60%), the first health professional seen after the injury event or onset of their symptoms was in an emergency department.…”

“…We were able to recruit and follow up a large proportion of participants. This is of particular importance given that the companion paper to this manuscript (Part I) reported a large proportion of patients who were very ill and reporting major problems with mobility, self‐care, and usual activities at the time of hospital discharge. A limitation of the study is not having pre‐study baseline data about the number of patients consulting a neurosurgeon after discharge.…”

“…Given the large number of patients who reported major problems on discharge (Part I), and despite the distance from patients' place of residence to RSHS, a very high number of patients were able to return to RSHS for a follow‐up consultation appointment with either a neurosurgeon or another specialist within the first month after their discharge from hospital. This is a higher follow‐up appointment rate than that reported anecdotally by clinicians before the study; clinicians reported the process of undertaking the study and creating a database containing patients' contact details and a system for reminding patients of their appointment enabled this much higher follow‐up appointment rate to be achieved.…”

“…A detailed description of the study methods is included in Part I, but in brief, the research was a prospective study. Participants were patients aged 18 years, or more, admitted to the RSHS Neurosurgery Department over a 4‐month period.…”

“…The Bandung Neurosurgery Patient Outcomes Project therefore aimed to describe patient characteristics, health care pathways, health‐related quality of life, and health/rehabilitation care needs of patients admitted to, and discharged from, the Neurosurgery Department at Dr. Hasan Sadikin Hospital (RSHS), Bandung City, West Java Region. Our companion Part I paper: (1) provided an overview of the study design, (2) described the characteristics of patients admitted to RSHS, and (3) described the health‐related quality of life, and other characteristics of patients proximate to their discharge from RSHS. This Part II paper describes: (1) patients' pathways into RSHS, (2) pathways following discharge, and (3) the feasibility of following up this patient population by telecommunication.…”