Concurrent municipality-based projects and home care services
readmissions
The initiative ‘Get Home Safe’ in Horsens home care was implemented during the study period. The aims were to (1) ensure the feeling of safe transitions from the hospital to patients’ own homes or community beds and (2) prevent hospital (re)admissions. As Horsens municipality served as our study’s control group, this initiative may have reduced the number of readmissions in the control group, thus resulting in a smaller study impact. In the same period, Odder home care also had an increased focus on improving the quality of transitions between the hospital and the patients’ own homes or community beds. Finally, Hedensted home care also implemented two intermediate beds in a nursing home during the period. These beds were used as an alternative to (re)admissions. Even though the readmission rates in the intervention group seemed constant over the two years, we must consider the possibility that these projects had an impact on the study outcomes.Additionally, the healthcare services offered differ among the municipalities. For instance, acute care teams are the first to visit discharged patients in one municipality, while a social and healthcare helper or a social and healthcare assistant conducts the first visits in another municipality. One could speculate that these differences in knowledge and professional competencies may have affected the outcome estimates.