TUESDAY, June 6 (HealthDay News) -- Treating pneumonia and other lower respiratory tract infections using a clinical pathway in the nursing home can be effective, while reducing hospitalizations and saving costs, according to a study in the June 7 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.
Mark Loeb, M.D., of McMaster University in Ontario, Canada, and colleagues conducted a trial among 680 residents of 22 nursing homes in Hamilton, Ontario, with participants randomized into two groups: usual care; or on-site treatment comprising oral antimicrobials, portable chest X-rays, oxygen saturation monitoring, rehydration and close monitoring by a research nurse.
Among the 327 subjects in the clinical pathway group, there were 34 (10 percent) hospitalizations, compared with 76 (22 percent) hospitalizations among the 353 patients in the usual care group. Those in the clinical pathway group had a mean hospital stay of 0.79 days per resident, compared with 1.74 days in the usual care group. There were 24 deaths (8 percent) in the clinical pathway group and 32 (9 percent) in the usual care group, a weighted mean difference of 2.9 percent.
"A clinical pathway to treat residents of nursing homes with pneumonia and other lower respiratory tract infections reduced hospitalizations by more than half compared with usual care, resulting in substantial cost savings, on average $1,016 per resident," the authors conclude.
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