Nudging High-acuity Emergency Department Patients to Schedule a Follow-up Visit

Completed · Not applicable

Conditions studied: Emergency Service, Hospital

In brief

The goal of this campaign is to reduce unnecessary emergency department (ED) visits by encouraging patients with high acuity visits to follow up with an appropriate primary care provider (PCP) or specialist and therefore obtain appropriate care outside of the ED. In this campaign, patients will be assigned to receive or not receive outreach following ED discharge that is aligned with the goal. Outreach will occur via a text message and information added to the patient's after visit summary, and will include a contact number to schedule and hyperlink to allow self-scheduling. The study will assess whether ED use differs across patients in different outreach conditions. It will also examine whether patients followed through on the calls to action in the messages differently across conditions.

Key facts

Study ID

NCT06535347

Run by

Geisinger Clinic

People needed

6814

Starts

2024-08-09

Expected to finish

2025-04-06

Last updated by the study team

2025-06-05

Who can join

Age: 18 and older. Sex: any. Healthy volunteers: not accepted.

You may qualify if…

• >= 18 years of age
• ED visit rated as high acuity (level L2 or L3)
• Discharged from ED in past 24 hours
• Attributed to a Geisinger PCP in Community Medicine Service Line

You may not qualify if…

• Have an appointment scheduled within 7 days following discharge with a primary care provider or specialist
• Institutionalized
• Cannot be contacted via the communication modality being used in the study (i.e., SMS), due to insufficient/missing contact information in the electronic health record or because the patient opted out
• Admitted to hospital
• Eloped from ED
• Left ED without being seen
• Deceased prior to messaging

Where it is running

• Geisinger Health System — Danville, Pennsylvania, United States

Full record on ClinicalTrials.gov

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