Background: Hospital discharges can be complex for patients, and ensuring patient comprehension of their clinical records and discharge summaries is critical for improving health-related outcomes. However, studies suggest that 88% of discharge instructions are not readable to the population served. In our prior study we demonstrated that generative AI (AI) has the potential to transform [...]

Background: Discharge summaries assist in the transition from inpatient to outpatient care by communicating key diagnoses, medication changes, and follow-up instructions. Despite use of standard formats for discharge summaries through electronic medical records (EMR), primary care physicians (PCPs) report dissatisfaction with locating important information in discharge summaries. Purpose: The aim of our project was to [...]

Background: Hospital discharges represent an important transition of care between the inpatient and outpatient setting. Discharge summary documentation enables providers to convey clinical reasoning and important updates in patient care; however, reviews of these documents suggest error rates as high as 36.4% (1.42 errors per document) (McMillen, et. al. 2006). Formalized resident discharge summary curricula [...]

Background: Patients admitted to inpatient hospital services are increasingly cared for by hospitalists rather than their primary care providers. When transitioning from hospital-based to ambulatory care, suboptimal information transfer can lead to serious adverse events and readmissions; therefore, demands for timely preparation of high-quality discharge summaries are increasing. Confronted with these demands, most hospitalists are [...]

Background: Multiple studies have established that delays in discharge summary transmission were associated with higher rates of all-cause hospital readmissions.    It has been recently shown that delaying the completion of discharge summaries beyond 72 hours increased the risk of 30-day readmissions by 9%.  We had embarked on an initiative to improve the rate of discharge [...]

Background: There are over 35 million discharges from inpatient hospitalizations annually in the US. During these transitions of care, patients are at risk for adverse events. It is crucial for patient safety to have accurate communication between the inpatient physician and the provider assuming care.The main conduit for this communication is the hospital discharge summary. [...]

Background: The Discharge Summary (DS) plays a vital role in transmitting key information about a patient’s hospital admission to their primary care clinician (PCC) and serves as a valuable information source for inpatient clinicians. However, current guidelines for DS creation tend to neglect the importance of prioritizing critical content. This oversight, coupled with the excessive [...]

Background: While CT imaging has become an invaluable tool for expedited medical evaluation, its use has been associated with an increasing number of incidental findings, the handling of which creates both medical and logistical challenges.  Pulmonary nodules are among the most frequent and medically relevant incidental findings, but are easily overlooked – especially when discovered [...]

Background: Hospital discharge summaries are critical to transitions of care as they are oftentimes the only substantive form of communication that accompanies patients to their next care setting. The lack of interoperability in our healthcare IT ecosystem amplifies the need for discharge summaries to mitigate subsequent duplication of services and increased costs. These documents must [...]

Background: Poor communication among health providers during transitions of care (TOC) between inpatient and outpatient settings is being increasingly recognized as responsible for subpar health outcomes, wasteful healthcare spending and low patient satisfaction. Such poor communication remains the status quo as it becomes part of the implicit curriculum in residency training when residents are not [...]