NCT01374035

The Western Norway Mental Health Interface Study on Referral Letters

Interface Between Primary Care and Specialist Mental Health Care - the Referral Letters

• Status: Withdrawn
• Phase: N/A
• Study type: Interventional
• Enrollment: 0 (actual)
• Sponsor: Helse Fonna · Academic / Other
• Sex: All
• Age: 18 Years
• Healthy volunteers: Not accepted

Summary

The main object to this trial is to study the function of referral letters as a mean to coordinate the care process for adult people when referred from Primary Care to Specialised Mental Health Care. The study will explore if and to what degree the quality of these referral letters can be improved, and the potential improvement's impact on defined patient-, professional and organisational related outcomes. According to Medical Research Council guidelines for evaluating complex interventions, a stepwise design with the use of both qualitative and quantitative methods will be used to conduct a controlled intervention study.

Detailed description

The study is based on a stepwise progression including four steps. Within step one group interview with four mixed groups of health professionals (both Primary and Specialised Care), patient representatives and managers will be conducted. The groups will give input on firstly, what information they think is important to include in the referral letters, and secondly, what impact they think improved referral letters can have for the organisation and care within Specialised Mental Health Care. Within step two a validated check-list to assess the quality of referral letters will be developed. Within step three outcome measures will be developed and tested. Both step two and three will make use of the results from step one in addition to existing literature and testing. Step four is the intervention study where measures from the former steps will be used.

Conditions

• Mental Disorders

Interventions

Type	Name	Description
OTHER	Quality improvement intervention	A complex intervention will be implemented within the group of GPs in the intervention group. It includes participation in defining criteria for good referral letters, information about the correlation between information in the referral letters and outcome, introduction to the guideline, and consecutive feedback on own preformance regarding content of referral letter and outcome for the patient.

Timeline

• Start date: 2010-08-01
• Primary completion: 2016-06-22
• Completion: 2019-12-13
• First posted: 2011-06-15
• Last updated: 2020-02-13

Locations

1 site across 1 country: Norway