{"id":114105,"date":"2016-06-30T09:28:43","date_gmt":"2016-06-30T13:28:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?post_type=school-college-post&p=114105"},"modified":"2016-06-30T09:28:43","modified_gmt":"2016-06-30T13:28:43","slug":"uconn-geriatrician-follows-patients-nursing-home","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2016\/06\/uconn-geriatrician-follows-patients-nursing-home\/","title":{"rendered":"UConn Geriatrician Follows Patients to Their (Nursing) Home"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Dr.
Dr. Dawn Murphy (rear center) celebrates the birthday of a patient for whom she provided post-acute care following discharge from UConn John Dempsey Hospital to the Avon Health Center. (Photo by Robin Baker)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

UConn Health is developing a care plan in which it sends a geriatrician to a community nursing home to care for patients following their discharge from the UConn John Dempsey Hospital.<\/p>\n

Dr. Dawn Murphy<\/a> recently joined the UConn Center on Aging as a transitionist. In this role, when a patient moves from the hospital to the Avon Health Center for post-acute care, Murphy becomes that patient\u2019s attending physician of record.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor elderly patients especially, care transitions have been shown be detrimental to their health for many reasons,\u201d Murphy says. \u201cI\u2019m attempting to work with both the hospital side and the skilled nursing facility side to improve collaboration and communication between team members. These are key elements for a successful transition of care.\u201d<\/p>\n

UConn Health is looking to have this type of relationship with other skilled nursing facilities in the community, says Dr. Patrick Coll<\/a>, professor of family medicine and medicine in the UConn Center on Aging. He has been doing this to some extent already at Seabury in Bloomfield, where he serves as medical director.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf the physician can come into the hospital where the patient is getting care, meet with the care team, and have access to the full range of electronic records for that patient during their hospital stay and any subsequent visits that they might have for other specialists here in the system, even after discharge, I think there are distinct advantages to that.\u201d Coll says. \u201cHaving access to the primary data \u2013 the labs, the results of the tests, the medications that the person was on \u2013 is helpful. And having contact with the care team in the hospital and getting an idea what the major issues are, I think is invaluable.\u201d<\/p>\n

The transitionist concept is part of a larger effort Coll is leading to improve care for elderly patients.<\/p>\n

One objective tied to overall patient outcomes is avoiding readmission to the hospital. When a hospital discharges a patient and that patient ends up back in the hospital within 30 days, it can have a negative impact on reimbursement.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe want them to stay at the skilled nursing facility until they can go home, then keep them at home and have them well enough to remain out of the hospital,\u201d says Murphy, who points out that with today\u2019s trend of shorter inpatient stays, patients discharged from the hospital into a nursing home often require a higher level of post-acute care than in the past.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe desire to provide continuity of care has encouraged forward thinking at health institutions and hospitals to reach out to nursing homes, develop a closer working relationship, and in our circumstance, to use our own physician, to try to connect that,\u201d Coll says.<\/p>\n

Murphy had two postdoctoral training stints at UConn Health before returning as a faculty clinician earlier this year. She completed a residency in internal medicine and a fellowship in geriatrics. In addition to her post-acute care work, she has an outpatient practice in the UConn Health Outpatient Pavilion.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt provides me with a good contrast to the transitions piece of my position,\u201d Murphy says. \u201cI am able to see many healthy elders from the wider community, as well as some of the transition patients whose trajectory to a skilled nursing facility then to home began when we first met in the hospital.\u201d<\/p>\n

More information about the UConn Center on Aging is available at health.uconn.edu\/aging<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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