American Telemedicine Association

Transitions of Care (TOC) between hospital, ambulatory, and home settings for high-risk, frequently hospitalized adults with chronic diseases, such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) are complex, costly, and vulnerable to safety threats and poor health outcomes. One potential solution to address this gap in care is the Transitional Care Model (TCM), which utilizes a patient-centered approach with in-home interventions; since in-person in-home visits are costly, using innovative telehealth, such as virtual visits via teleconferencing may be just as effective with greater feasibility, scalability, and sustainability, particularly in the post-COVID-19 era as has been seen the rapid expansion of these technologies. With a transdisciplinary team of experts from cognitive science, care transitions/handoffs, human factors engineering, design, implementation science, and health services research, the study team proposes to implement and evaluate via a randomized clinical trial the "TELE-TOC: Telehealth Education: Leveraging Electronic Transitions Of Care for COPD patients," intervention which includes a virtual visit, pharmacy-based, in-home intervention for COPD patients to improve medication use and patient outcomes among a population at high risk for readmission and medication safety events.