Telephone Follow-up as a Primary Care Intervention for Postdischarge Outcomes Improvement: A Systematic Review

Recent economic and political pressures, including passage of the Affordable Health Care for America Act, have thrust the concerns about identifying opportunities for affordable and high-quality health care to the forefront of public debate, and have accelerated the exploration of methods to improve the quality and cost-effectiveness of healthcare. Approximately 1 in 5 Medicare patients are readmitted within 30 days of their primary hospitalization, at a cost of $17.4 billion annually. The potential opportunities for significant cost-savings and quality improvement have intensified research in the field of transitional care, defined as “a set of actions designed to ensure the coordination and continuity of health care as patients transfer between different levels or locations of care.”

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–J. Benjamin Crocker, MD, Jonathan T. Crocker, MD, Jeffrey L. Greenwald, MD

–This article originally appeared in the September 2012 issue of The American Journal of Medicine.