Identification of Interventions to Improve Patient Experienced Quality of Care in Transitions Between Healthcare Settings: a Scoping Review

Background: Transitions in healthcare settings can be a challenge for patients and they express a need for guidance and support to cope with these transitions. The aim of this scoping review was to investigate if interventions can improve patients' experiences when transitioning between healthcare settings.

Methods: This review was conducted following the Johanna Briggs Institute's methods and reported according to the PRISMA-ScR Checklist. Included articles were published and peer-reviewed, and reported qualitative and quantitative findings on patient experiences with interventions when transitioning between healthcare settings. The search was conducted in May 2024 in Medline Ovid, Embase Ovid, and Cinahl.

Results: Twenty-three studies were included. Factors extracted from the studies were: author(s), year of publication, country of origin, study design, theoretical methods, population description, intervention, phenomena of interest(s), and key findings. There has been an increase in published studies on the subject in the last few years, and most of the included studies originated from Western countries. Most studies were quantitative, primarily RCTs, and the theoretical methods were thus mainly statistical analysis. The study populations were found to be heterogeneous. The interventions were categorized: care coordinator, program, integrated care, online communication platform, coaching, discharge care plan, and miscellaneous interventions.

Conclusions: Overall, interventions were found to improve the patient experience. Centralization of healthcare has increased the number of transitions, and patients express that the coordination of healthcare transitions can be improved. This review's findings should be used alongside other research on interventions' effect on factors like hospital readmissions and mortality to determine the optimal intervention to implement.