Background: Bladder health encompasses total bladder well-being and not merely the absence of urinary symptoms. While much is known about the prevalence of urinary symptoms in women, little is known about the distribution of bladder health (eg, optimal to poor).
Objective: We report the distributions of multiple dimensions of bladder health and function in a population-based sample of community-dwelling women, overall and separately in women without urinary symptoms to begin to explore bladder health dimensions that may precede the onset of symptoms.
Over one-third of Medicare beneficiaries discharged to nursing facilities require readmission. When those readmissions are to a different hospital than the original admission, or "fragmented readmissions," they carry increased risks of mortality and subsequent readmissions. This study examines whether Medicare beneficiaries readmitted from a nursing facility are more likely to have a fragmented readmission than beneficiaries readmitted from home among a 2018 cohort of Medicare beneficiaries, and examined whether this association was affected by a diagnosis of Alzheimer's Disease (AD).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: Fragmented readmissions, when admission and readmission occur at different hospitals, are associated with increased charges compared with nonfragmented readmissions. We assessed if hospital participation in health information exchange (HIE) was associated with differences in total charges in fragmented readmissions.
Data Source: Medicare Fee-for-Service Data, 2018.
Objectives: We examined the association between electronic health information sharing and repeat imaging in readmissions among older adults with and without Alzheimer disease (AD).
Study Design: Cohort study using national Medicare data.
Methods: Among Medicare beneficiaries with 30-day readmissions in 2018, we examined repeat imaging on the same body system during the readmission.
Background: The Center for Disease Control and Prevention's Stopping Elderly Accidents, Deaths, and Injuries (STEADI) initiative offers health care providers tools and resources to assist with fall risk screening and multifactorial fall risk assessment and interventions. Its effectiveness has never been evaluated in a randomized trial.
Objective: This study aims to describe the protocol for the STEADI Options Randomized Quality Improvement Trial (RQIT), which was designed to evaluate the impact on falls and all-cause health expenditures of a telemedicine-based form of STEADI implemented among older adults aged 65 years and older, within a primary care setting.
Stud Health Technol Inform
January 2024
Clinical dashboards are an emerging and fast-evolving technology used to support frontline clinicians' practice. Understanding end users' perceived engagement with clinical dashboards is essential to co-design, implementation, and adoption. There is a lack of literature exploring the integration of dashboards into clinical workflow.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: The EQUIPPED (Enhancing Quality of Prescribing Practices for Older Adults Discharged from the Emergency Department) medication safety program is an evidence-informed quality improvement initiative to reduce potentially inappropriate medications (PIMs) prescribed by Emergency Department (ED) providers to adults aged 65 and older at discharge. We aimed to scale-up this successful program using (1) a traditional implementation model at an ED with a novel electronic medical record and (2) a new hub-and-spoke implementation model at three new EDs within a health system that had previously implemented EQUIPPED (hub). We hypothesized that implementation speed would increase under the hub-and-spoke model without cost to PIM reduction or site engagement.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIn support of the Improving Primary Care Understanding of Resources and Screening for Urinary Incontinence to Enhance Treatment initiative with the Veterans Health Administration, we developed a clinical dashboard to support primary care providers in identifying underdiagnosed, undertreated women Veterans with urinary incontinence. This paper describes our dashboard development and evaluation. We employed a user-centered design in determining dashboard requirements, interface design, and functionality.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjectives: In this pragmatic clinical trial, the primary objective is to increase access to behavioral treatment of urinary incontinence (UI) for women Veterans by comparing the effectiveness of two virtual care delivery modalities.
Methods: Veterans Affairs (VA) clinical sites in AL, GA, NC will virtually randomize 286 women Veterans with UI (ie, stress, urge, or mixed). We will compare the effectiveness of our mHealth UI application (MyHealtheBladder) to a single VA Video Connect (VVC) session delivered by trained UI providers.
Background: The Enhancing Quality of Prescribing Practices for Older Veterans Discharged from the Emergency Department (EQUIPPED) program developed an audit and feedback health information technology (IT) solution with the intent to replace the in-person academic detailing service provided by the program. The EQUIPPED dashboard provides emergency department (ED) providers with a personalized view of their prescribing performance.
Objectives: Here, we analyze the association between ED provider characteristics and viewership of the EQUIPPED dashboard, adding insight into strategies for addressing barriers to initial use.
Background: Urgency urinary incontinence (UUI) occurs in >40% of older women. Our objective was to examine the relationship of total and free plasma 25-hydroxyvitamin D (25(OH)D) and UUI to evaluate vitamin D status as a novel target for prevention of UUI.
Methods: We conducted a nested case control study using the Nurses' Health Study (NHS) and NHS II.
Introduction: Urinary incontinence (UI) is a common and disruptive symptom of Parkinson's disease (PD). This study aimed to identify neural correlates associated with UI among PD patients with UI (UI-PD) compared to those PD patients without UI (nonUI-PD) with the expectation of demonstrating increased functional connectivity (FC) between areas in the striatum and limbic system and decreased FC in executive areas.
Methods: rsfMRI and T1w data (n = 119) were retrieved from the Parkinson's Progression Markers Initiative (PPMI).
Importance: When an older adult is hospitalized, where they are discharged is of utmost importance. Fragmented readmissions, defined as readmissions to a different hospital than a patient was previously discharged from, may increase the risk of a nonhome discharge for older adults. However, this risk may be mitigated via electronic information exchange between the admission and readmission hospitals.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWhether initiation of statins could increase survival free of dementia and disability in adults aged ≥75 years is unknown. PREVENTABLE, a double-blind, placebo-controlled randomized pragmatic clinical trial, will compare high-intensity statin therapy (atorvastatin 40 mg) with placebo in 20,000 community-dwelling adults aged ≥75 years without cardiovascular disease, disability, or dementia at baseline. Exclusion criteria include statin use in the prior year or for >5 years and inability to take a statin.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: To estimate referent values for performance on clinical mobility tests conducted amongst racially diverse adults aged 50-95 years in the Southeast US.
Design: This is an observational study of community-dwelling older adults from diverse racial groups who participated in observational and rehabilitative studies conducted from 2011-2019.
Setting: Rehabilitation clinics around the greater metropolitan Atlanta, Georgia, region.
Background: Enhancing Quality of Prescribing Practices for Older Adults Discharged from the Emergency Department (EQUIPPED) is an effective quality improvement program initially designed in the Veterans Administration (VA) health care system to reduce potentially inappropriate medication prescribing for adults aged 65 years and older. This study examined factors that influence implementation of EQUIPPED in EDs from four distinct, non-VA academic health systems using a convergent mixed methods design that operationalized the Consolidated Framework for Implementation Research (CFIR). Fidelity of delivery served as the primary implementation outcome.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIntroduction: Few instruments measure knowledge, attitudes, and beliefs (KAB) related to bladder health. Existing questionnaires have predominantly focused on KAB related to specific conditions such as urinary incontinence, overactive bladder, and other pelvic floor disorders. To address this literature gap, the Prevention of Lower Urinary Tract Symptoms (PLUS) research consortium developed an instrument that is being administered in the baseline assessment of the PLUS RISE FOR HEALTH longitudinal study.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Although electronic health information sharing is expanding nationally, it is unclear whether electronic health information sharing improves patient outcomes, particularly for patients who are at the highest risk of communication challenges, such as older adults with Alzheimer disease.
Objective: To determine the association between hospital-level health information exchange (HIE) participation and in-hospital or postdischarge mortality among Medicare beneficiaries with Alzheimer disease or 30-day readmissions to a different hospital following an admission for one of several common conditions.
Methods: This was a cohort study of Medicare beneficiaries with Alzheimer disease who had one or more 30-day readmissions in 2018 following an initial admission for select Hospital Readmission Reduction Program conditions (acute myocardial infarction, congestive heart failure, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and pneumonia) or common reasons for hospitalization among older adults with Alzheimer disease (dehydration, syncope, urinary tract infection, or behavioral issues).
Objectives: The Enhancing the Quality of Prescribing Practices for Older Adults Discharged from the Emergency Department (EQUIPPED) medication safety program involves three core components including provider education, clinical decision support, and audit and feedback using the American Geriatrics Society Beers Criteria to determine potentially inappropriate medications (PIMs). This study evaluated implementation of audit and feedback through a centralized informatics-based dashboard compared to academic detailing delivered one on one by an EQUIPPED champion.
Methods: In a cluster-randomized study (October 2019-September 2021), eight VA emergency department (EDs) implemented either the academic detailing (n = 4) or the dashboard (n = 4) strategy for the audit and feedback component of EQUIPPED.
Background: Interhospital care fragmentation, when a patient is readmitted to a different hospital than they were originally discharged from, occurs in 20%-25% of readmissions. Mode of transport to the hospital, specifically ambulance use, may be a risk factor for fragmented readmissions. Our study seeks to further understand the relationship between ambulance transport and fragmented readmissions in older adults, a population that is at increased risk for poor outcomes following fragmented readmissions.
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