Caplan 1999.

Study characteristics
Methods	Parallel randomised trial Study conducted between October 1995 and February 1997.
Participants	Setting: Australia Range of acute conditions requiring admission to hospital; participants recruited from casualty Number recruited: hospital at home: 51; hospital: 49
Interventions	Hospital community outreach team Type of service: hospital community outreach team. Clinical responsibility by GP, or hospital doctor if GP declined
Outcomes	Functional status, mental status, clinical complications, patient and caregiver satisfaction, GP views
Notes	Follow‐up: 1 and 6 months Funding: not reported Conflicts of interest: not reported Ethical approval: hospital ethical committee
Risk of bias
Bias	Authors' judgement	Support for judgement
Random sequence generation (selection bias)	Low risk	Computer‐generated random numbers, stratified by participant's residence and if they had a deep vein thrombosis
Allocation concealment (selection bias)	Low risk	Sealed envelope
Baseline outcome measurements (selection bias)	Low risk	Baseline outcome measurements done prior to intervention for functional and mental status, and diagnoses; no relevant differences found
Baseline characteristics (selection bias)	Low risk	Baseline characteristics of treatment and control groups are reported and are similar
Blinding of participants and personnel (performance bias) All outcomes	Unclear risk	Blinding of participants and personnel not possible
Blinding of outcome assessment (detection bias) Subjective outcomes	Unclear risk	Unclear risk for functional status, mental status, clinical complications, patient and caregiver satisfaction, GP view
Blinding of outcome assessment (detection bias) Objective outcomes	Low risk	Low risk for mortality, readmission
Incomplete outcome data (attrition bias) All outcomes	Low risk	No loss to follow‐up reported
Selective reporting (reporting bias)	Unclear risk	Insufficient information to allocate low or high risk