Improving patient care through focus on transitions of care is hard! There are very few studies that have evaluated strategies that work in a randomized controlled trial (RCT) fashion and none has been able to show any benefit. Here is a large RCT that failed to show a benefit.
What is that works? And works consistently?
Number needed to treat is an important concept as it simplifies the communication of the effect size from clinical studies. It tells us the number of patients needed to be treated to get the desired outcomes (or an undesireable adverse event). Here is a much longer description from JAMA.
Must read article in JAMA. Here is a graph that says is all; full article is here.
