Background: Hospitals increasingly face capacity strain and challenges with patient flow, leading to emergency department (ED) crowding, ED boarding, and threats to patient safety and quality of care. ED boarding occurs from the time of the decision to admit until the patient arrives in an inpatient bed and is affected by many factors including discharge [...]

Background: Efficient discharge planning for hospital medicine patients requires alignment across multiple disciplines. Understanding how clinicians communicate information about discharge readiness can identify opportunities to improve discharge coordination and impact length of stay, hospital capacity, and patient satisfaction. The objective of this study was to outline the existing information gathering and communication pathways around discharge [...]

Background: Hospitals are facing increasing pressure to optimize throughput in order to reduce excess length of stay and improve emergency department (ED) boarding times. Improving coordination and throughput in complex organizations with multiple care sites can be particularly challenging. Health systems have implemented numerous initiatives to improve hospital throughput, but these efforts have mainly been [...]