Clinicians’ attitudes and system capacity regarding transitional care practices within a health system: Survey results from the partners-PCORI transitions study

Objectives: Successful efforts to improve transitional care depend in part on local attitudes, workload, and training. Before implementing a multifaceted transitions intervention within an Accountable Care Organization, an understanding of contextual factors among providers involved in care transitions in inpatient and outpatient settings was needed. Methods: As part of the Partners-Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) Transitions Study, we purposefully sampled inpatient and outpatient providers within the Accountable Care Organization. Survey questions focused on training and feedback on transitional tasks and opinions on the quality of care transitions. We also surveyed unit- and practice-level leadership on current transitional care practices. Results are presented using descriptive statistics. Results: Among 387 providers surveyed, 220 responded (response rate = 57%) from 15 outpatient practices and 26 inpatient units. A large proportion of respondents reported to have never received training (50%) or feedback (68%) on key transitional care activities, and most (58%) reported insufficient time to complete these tasks. Respondents on average reported transitions processes led to positive outcomes some to most of the time (mean scores = 4.70–5.16 on a 1–7 scale). Surveys of leadership showed tremendous variation by unit and by practice in the performance of various transitional care activities. Conclusions: Many respondents felt that training, feedback, and time allotted to key transitional care activities were inadequate. Satisfaction with the quality of the transitions process was middling. Understanding these results, especially variation by location, was important to customizing implementation of the intervention and will be key to understanding variation in the success of the intervention across locations.