BOOST project appeared to reduce hospital readmission rates

The Better Outcomes for Older adults through Safe Transitions, or BOOST, project is associated with a decrease in readmission rates, according to recent study findings published in the Journal of Hospital Medicine.

“Our findings support that among the sites willing and able to share the outcome data required for the study, there was significant improvement,” study researcher Luke Hansen, MD, MHS, of the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, said in a press release. “There is more work to do to fully engage non-academic sites in quality improvement research like ours and to understand what makes for fertile ground for implementing changes included in the BOOST toolkit.”

Luke Hansen

The BOOST program included 11 sample volunteer hospitals.

Researchers found the average rate of 30-day rehospitalization in BOOST was 14.7% before implementation compared with 12.7% 12 months later (P=.010). During the preintervention period, rehospitalization rates for matched controls were 14% compared with 14.1% in the post-intervention period (P=.831). The average rehospitalization rate for all BOOST units compared with controls was 2% (P=.054).

“We are encouraged by our initial findings and learned substantially from this initial implementation and evaluation,” study researcher Mark V. Williams, MD, MHM, of the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, said in a press release. “Subsequent project BOOST collaboration with greater than 130 hospitals has been modified and bolstered to increase the intensity of the BOOST intervention.”

Andrew Auerbach

In an accompanying editorial, Andrew Auerbach, MD, MPH, of the University of California, San Francisco School of Medicine, and colleagues said although there are shortcomings, “the authors provide the necessary start down the road toward a fuller understanding of real-world efforts to reduce readmissions.”

In another accompanying editorial, Ashish Jha, MD, MPH, of the Harvard School of Public Health, said the findings only support small improvements in a small number of hospitals.

“Hospitals will need to find ways to reduce readmission, and programs like BOOST, even when executed perfectly, will be necessary but likely insufficient,” he wrote. “Improving the quality of care transitions is critically important. But to truly get to better outcomes for older Americans, hospitals will need to think beyond their four walls.”

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Disclosure: See the study for a full list of disclosures.