Implications will be discussed in a linked workshop
Findings of the largest-ever trial of inpatient C-L Psychiatry—The HOME Study, led by the Academy’s 2019-2020 president Michael Sharpe, MD, FACLP, and this year’s ACLP Foundation Research Professor, Jane Walker, MBChB, PhD, FACLP, both of Oxford University in the UK—will be presented at CLP 2023.
Registration for the November 9-11 meeting opens this month (July).
Protocols for the randomized controlled trial (RCT) describe how prolonged hospital stays are a problem for older people and for health services. They also explain that “failure to effectively manage the psychological and social aspects of illness is an important cause of prolonged hospital stays.”
The HOME Study set out to test the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of a bespoke C-L Psychiatry service (Proactive Integrated C-L Psychiatry), described by Drs. Sharpe and Walker in General Hospital Psychiatry, compared with usual care in reducing the time patients spend in hospital.
The researchers enrolled 2,744 inpatients aged 65 years plus, in three UK hospitals, making this the largest ever RCT undertaken in C-L Psychiatry.
The researchers measured the number of days patients were in hospital in the month following enrolment, as the trial’s primary outcome, as well as a number of secondary outcomes including probability of discharge over the whole index admission, quality of life, cognitive function, independent functioning, symptoms of anxiety and depression, experience of hospital stay, death in the year after randomization and health care costs.
The, as yet unpublished, results will be announced on the first day of the annual meeting (November 9), and their implications discussed more fully during the meeting in a linked workshop on the future of inpatient C-L Psychiatry.