Observational Study
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2019. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Gastroenterol. May 7, 2019; 25(17): 2122-2132
Published online May 7, 2019. doi: 10.3748/wjg.v25.i17.2122
Transitions of care across hospital settings in patients with inflammatory bowel disease
Leigh R Warren, Jonathan M Clarke, Sonal Arora, Mauricio Barahona, Naila Arebi, Ara Darzi
Leigh R Warren, Sonal Arora, Ara Darzi, Patient Safety Translational Research Centre, Imperial College London, London W2 1NY, United Kingdom
Leigh R Warren, Jonathan M Clarke, Sonal Arora, Ara Darzi, Department of Surgery and Cancer, Imperial College London, London W2 1NY, United Kingdom
Jonathan M Clarke, Mauricio Barahona, Centre for Health Policy, Imperial College London Centre for Mathematics of Precision Healthcare, Imperial College London, London SW7 2BX, United Kingdom
Jonathan M Clarke, Department of Biostatistics, Harvard University, Boston, MA 02115, United States
Mauricio Barahona, Department of Mathematics, Imperial College London, London SW7 2BX, United Kingdom
Naila Arebi, Department of Gastroenterology, St. Marks Academic Institute, Harrow HA1 3UJ, United Kingdom
Author contributions: Warren LR, Clarke JM, Arora S, Arebi N and Darzi A contributed to study conception and design; Warren LR, Clarke JM, contributed to data acquisition and writing of article; Warren LR, Clarke JM, and Barahona M contributed to data analysis and interpretation; Barahona M contributed to editing of article; Arora S, Arebi N, Darzi A and Barahona M contributed to review and final approval of article.
Supported by grants fromthe National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Imperial Patient Safety and Translational Research Centre (PSTRC) and the Peter Sowerby Foundation. Infrastructure support for this research was provided by the NHIR Imperial Biomedical Research Centre (BRC). MB acknowledges support from EPSRC [grant number EP/N014529/1] supporting the EPSRC Centre for Mathematics of Precision Healthcare. The views expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and not necessarily those of the NHS, the National Institute for Health Research or the Department of Health.
Institutional review board statement: This study received local ethical approval through the Imperial College Research Ethics Committee [17IC4178].
Informed consent statement: This study used administrative data that was not identifiable. Informed consent was not applicable.
Conflict-of-interest statement: There are no financial conflicts of interest declared by the authors.
Data sharing statement: HES data are available on application to the NHS Digital (https://digital.nhs.uk).
STROBE statement: This study followed the guidelines of the STROBE statement.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Leigh R Warren, MBBS, Clinical Research Fellow, Surgeon, Department of Surgery and Cancer, Imperial College London, St. Mary’s Campus, Norfolk Place, London W2 1NY, United Kingdom. leigh.warren@imperial.ac.uk
Telephone: +44-2075895111 Fax: +44-2033126309
Received: January 17, 2019
Peer-review started: January 18, 2019
First decision: January 30, 2019
Revised: February 5, 2019
Accepted: February 22, 2019
Article in press: February 23, 2019
Published online: May 7, 2019
Core Tip

Core tip: Patients with Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) are often exposed to transitions of care between providers and settings which negatively impacts care continuity. This is the first paper to identify and measure the location and type of hospital encounters for IBD patients in England at a National level. Patterns of care identified in this study are important to guide the exchange of health information between providers to ensure safe, high quality care for patients with IBD.