Background: Hospital readmission rates may be influenced by the level of healthcare literacy. Patients who lack an understanding of their diagnosis and warning signs have the potential to not seek medical care in a timely manner. The information patients tend to receive upon discharge is lengthy and unclear. In addition, instructions are not standardized across [...]

Background: Transition from the inpatient to outpatient setting presents a safety risk to pediatric patients. Project IMPACT (Improving Pediatric Patient-Centered Care Transitions) is a multi-site quality improvement collaborative developed to improve the hospital to home transition for pediatric patients using a transition bundle. One bundle element is the use of teach-back (TB) to confirm caregiver [...]

Background: Inconsistent transitions of care from the inpatient to outpatient setting may lead to preventable readmissions. Critical processes completed at discharge shown to reduce readmissions at our institution include admission and discharge medication reconciliation, clinically appropriate follow-up scheduled prior to discharge, and timely completion of a discharge summary within 48 hours of discharge (the “Core [...]

Background: Many hospitals set targets for discharging patients before noon in efforts to optimize patient throughput. However, discharge before noon (DCBN) has been associated with increased length of stay (LOS) in an adult population. The relationship between discharge time of day and LOS in pediatric patients is uncertain. This study aims to evaluate the relationship [...]

Background: Discharge education is a key component of safe transition from inpatient to outpatient care in the pediatric population. Project IMPACT (Improving Pediatric Patient-Centered Care Transitions) is a multi-site quality improvement project developed to improve care transitions for pediatric patients using a transition bundle. One bundle element focuses on thorough discharge education (DE) and the [...]

Background: Heart failure is a deadly epidemic with over 37 million people affected worldwide with a multitude of physical, psychological and financial implications on patients and the healthcare system. The progression of heart failure can be prevented by appropriate and persistent medication therapy however previous research has estimated forty to sixty percent of patients with [...]

Background: Preventable hospital readmissions are a common problem for medical centers in the United States. Recent studies have focused on what patients perceive as causes for their return to the hospital. One factor driving readmissions is patients’ difficulty anticipating what to expect after they leave the hospital despite discharge instructions, especially anticipating and surmounting challenges [...]

Background: The hospital discharge is one of the most important aspects of a patient’s hospitalization, yet in residency training, this process often goes overlooked. Most residents are never properly taught how to effectively discharge a hospitalized patient. As a sequelae, patients often lack understanding about their hospitalization, treatment(s), and follow up plans. This uncertainty can [...]

Background: As a group of medical students in a five-week leadership program, we were charged with making a medicine inpatient unit at an urban quaternary care academic medical center the best unit in the hospital. Research shows that the hospital spends an estimated $2721 for every inpatient day (Kaiser, AHA Annual Survey, 2015). Longer lengths [...]

Background: Long discharge times (DT), (the time from discharge order to patient leaving room), have detrimental impacts on any hospital. Apart from causing dissatisfaction among patients and their families who are waiting to go home, prolonged DT also increases wait times for patients being admitted from the ED. Delayed admissions pursuant to late discharges, caused [...]