OPTIMAL trial completes patient recruitment

23% of old­er peo­ple leav­ing hos­pi­tal and enter­ing res­i­den­tial aged care for the first time present to an emer­gency depart­ment with­in 90 days (Ina­cio et al 2021). 

The OPTI­MAL (Opti­mis­ing old­er People’s Tran­si­tion from acute care Into res­i­den­tial aged care through Mul­ti­dis­ci­pli­nary Assess­ment and Liai­son) tri­al has now com­plet­ed patient recruit­ment across pub­lic hos­pi­tals in met­ro­pol­i­tan Adelaide. 

Evi­dence shows strength­en­ing coor­di­na­tion and con­ti­nu­ity of care dur­ing this tran­si­tion can help reduce readmissions. 

The OPTI­MAL project is test­ing new ways to bet­ter sup­port old­er peo­ple mov­ing from hos­pi­tal into res­i­den­tial aged care. The aim is to reduce unnec­es­sary hos­pi­tal read­mis­sions and emer­gency depart­ment pre­sen­ta­tions by improv­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tion, plan­ning and han­dover between services. 

OPTI­MAL is a col­lab­o­ra­tive effort involv­ing the Com­mis­sion on Excel­lence and Inno­va­tion in Health (CEIH), the North­ern, Cen­tral and South­ern Ade­laide Local Health Net­works, Flinders Uni­ver­si­ty, the Reg­istry of Senior Aus­tralians Research Cen­tre and Health Trans­la­tion SA. 

The project is fund­ed through the Med­ical Research Future Fund grant titled ​‘Using a state-wide learn­ing health sys­tem for rapid deploy­ment, eval­u­a­tion and trans­la­tion of new mod­els of care in SA to reduce pres­sure on ED and acute care’.

With recruit­ment now com­plete, researchers will analyse data on par­tic­i­pants’ hos­pi­tal use in the fol­low­ing 90 days. This will help deter­mine whether the inter­ven­tions have been effec­tive in reduc­ing read­mis­sions and emer­gency depart­ment pre­sen­ta­tions for old­er peo­ple enter­ing res­i­den­tial aged care.

The results will pro­vide evi­dence to guide future prac­tice and sup­port safer, smoother tran­si­tions from hos­pi­tal to res­i­den­tial aged care. 

If you would like to know more about this research, please email Carmel.​McNamara@​flinders.​edu.​au. For infor­ma­tion about the CEIH’s part­ner­ship work, please email ceih@​sa.​gov.​au.