A comprehensive analysis of patient telephone records at an inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) clinic revealed that 15 percent of patients account for half of all calls to the clinic. Forty-two percent of frequent-caller patients also were seen in the emergency department or hospitalized within the following year.
The results, which can help doctors identify patients with the most severe disease and those at risk of potentially avoidable high-cost medical interventions, were reported in a study published online this week in the journal Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology.
Inflammatory bowel diseases (Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis) are chronic lifelong conditions which affect the gastrointestinal tract of up to 2 million Americans, the majority of whom are diagnosed as young adults. Telephone communication in IBD care is common, and involves reporting clinical status, treatment, reassurance, and completion of health care forms and insurance authorization. Yet, until now, there has been limited information on telephone activity volume or the reasons for calls in the care of chronic illness, including IBD.
“Telephone surveillance and the use of big data allowed us to find red flags identifying patients at risk of high-cost medical interventions, such as emergency department use and/or hospitalization. These findings can help to identify disease severity and teach us how to take better care of our patients,†noted senior author David Binion, M.D., visiting professor of medicine, clinical and translational science and co-director of the IBD Center at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine.
Researchers tracked more than 50,000 phone calls over a period of two years, from over 3,000 patients. The researchers assessed associations between clinical factors and logged telephone encounters, and between patterns of telephone calls and future visits to the emergency room or hospitalization.
Calls were categorized into five groups: