# A pragmatic evaluation of a secure web-based platform for hospital-dialysis provider communication to improve hospitalization outcomes among dialysis patients

> **NIH NIH R18** · EMORY UNIVERSITY · 2020 · $323,454

## Abstract

PROJECT SUMMARY
Despite national emphasis on hospital readmission reduction among dialysis patients, the health information
technology infrastructure needed to facilitate this reduction is sorely lacking. U.S. dialysis facilities and
hospitals generally use different electronic health records, and without this direct avenue for communication
between providers, essential components of successful care are frequently not transmitted to the outpatient
dialysis facility, increasing hospital readmission risk. Similarly, hospitals also may not receive adequate, timely
patient information from dialysis facilities needed to provide high-quality, appropriate care at admission or
during hospitalization. Ongoing quality improvement efforts at Emory can be leveraged into a pragmatic
research study, to address this gap and produce a practical, potentially sustainable strategy to reduce hospital
readmissions among this high-risk population via an effectiveness-implementation hybrid design. We will
leverage an existing multidisciplinary team (hospitalists, nephrologists, nurses, administrators) already working
to reduce readmissions among dialysis patients at Emory University Hospital Midtown, as well as our
established research team at Emory Dialysis. Our team will modify an existing, secure, web-based platform
that allows dialysis facilities to communicate directly with transplant centers regarding referrals and patient
status. We will then evaluate this modified platform (“DialysisConnect”), which will allow exchange of discharge
summaries, send automated reminders to providers to view the discharge summaries, and track views of
discharge summaries. Importantly, DialysisConnect will also allow direct communication between hospitals and
dialysis facilities, so that specific, critical information—beyond that found on typical discharge summaries—
such as the dry weight and medication lists, can be transmitted from hospital to dialysis facility and vice versa.
We aim: (1) to determine essential components for two-way, peri-hospitalization, standardized communication
between hospitals and dialysis facilities, via open-ended input via focus groups with potential DialysisConnect
users; (2) to develop DialysisConnect, which will allow direct communication between dialysis facilities and
hospitals at admission and during and after hospitalizations of dialysis patients and will be modified from an
existing platform currently being tested in our dialysis facilities and area transplant centers; and (3) to
simultaneously evaluate the effectiveness of DialysisConnect and its potential for sustained and wider
implementation in a hybrid pragmatic trial. Because this pragmatic study will be implemented in our outpatient
dialysis facilities and the hospital at which most of our dialysis population admissions occur, it could improve
healthcare practice regarding hospitalizations in the local, high-risk dialysis population in a sustainable way.
Additionally, DialysisConnect will...

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10003224
- **Project number:** 5R18DK118467-03
- **Recipient organization:** EMORY UNIVERSITY
- **Principal Investigator:** Laura Plantinga
- **Activity code:** R18 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2020
- **Award amount:** $323,454
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2018-09-01 → 2022-07-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10003224

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10003224, A pragmatic evaluation of a secure web-based platform for hospital-dialysis provider communication to improve hospitalization outcomes among dialysis patients (5R18DK118467-03). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-27 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10003224. Licensed CC0.

---

*[NIH grants dataset](/datasets/nih-grants) · CC0 1.0*