Educational Text Messages Decreased Emergency Department Utilization Among Infant Caregivers: A Randomized Trial
Section snippets
Study Participants
Caregivers of newborns (0–10 weeks of age) receiving primary care at a single urban high-volume (22,000 visits per year across 9500 empaneled patients) academic primary care clinic were recruited for participation. This primary care practice is the sole academic pediatric practice at a midsized university in the Midwest; it is colocated in a children's hospital and affiliated with a larger regional health care network. Caregivers—including biological parents, family members, and foster
Results
A total of 231 participants were enrolled onto the study, 114 in the ESoC group and 117 in the ESoC + Text group. Twenty-four subjects did not complete the intervention (15 from the ESoC group and 9 from the ESoC + Text group); only one of these participants was not included in the final analysis for the ESoC because the infant died (Fig. 2). Because of the changing nature of mobile service among the clinic patient population, participants in the ESoC + Text group who were unable to receive
Discussion
This study sought to demonstrate the feasibility and effectiveness of sending educational text messages, evaluating their impact on ED visit use among caregivers of infants. Historical clinic data reveals that on average, patients visit the ED 2 times before 13 months of age. While participants who only received ESoC information demonstrated similar ED use to our clinic's baseline ED utilization rate, participants who received text messages chose to go to the ED—overall and for nonurgent
Acknowledgments
This study was funded by the Department of Pediatrics, Saint Louis University School of Medicine, which had no influence in the design, data collection, analysis, interpretation of data, or construction and submission of this report. We thank the staff and care providers at Danis Pediatric Center at SSM Health Cardinal Glennon Children's Medical Center for their support.
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The authors have no conflicts of interest to disclose.