Background: Emergency Department (ED) overcrowding and delays in ED throughput have several important consequences , such as boarding of admitted patients in the ED, longer hospital stays and delay in effective inpatient discharge planning (1). Longer ED boarding time and delay in inpatient discharge process are parts of a vicious cycle of internal bottleneck contributing [...]

Background: Failure to follow-up results of laboratory tests pending at discharge (TPADs) can lead to patient harm. Numerous interventions have been proposed to improve follow-up. The Laboratory Medicine Best Practices (LMBP™) workgroup, sponsored by the Centers for Disease Control, commissioned a systematic review to address the impact of various interventions on TPAD documentation, communication, and [...]

Background: Limited data exist about the magnitude of and the factors associated with one-year mortality of medical patients after their hospital discharge. Factors known during the hospitalization may be associated with high mortality risk. One may also wonder whether healthcare utilization during the first 30 days after discharge are also of any prognostic value for [...]

Background: Patients with limited English proficiency (LEP) face barriers communicating with their medical providers and understanding their treatment plans. Prior work shows that communication barriers limit LEP patients’ understanding of their discharge instructions. However, little is known about disparities in outcomes between LEP and English proficient (EP) patients. To address this gap, we measured the [...]

Background: Hospitals globally have been facing unprecedented challenges with patient throughput and capacity, especially in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. Efficient discharge processes are integral to improving bed availability and mitigating the negative outcomes associated with patient boarding in emergency departments Purpose: This study evaluates the efficacy of an early morning huddle approach in [...]

Background: Written discharge instructions improve patient understanding and self-management after hospitalization, and they are an evidence-based practice to improve patient understanding. However, over the past three decades, studies have shown that patients have poor understanding and routinely overestimate their understanding of provider recommendations, placing them at higher risk for adverse medication events and hospital readmissions. [...]

Background: Patient-reported measures including health confidence correlate with health outcomes, such as hospital utilization and post-acute care (PAC) needs within research settings. A more recent approach has been to develop learning health systems (LHS) with these measures to incorporate research findings into clinical care at a rapid rate. We have found that a measure of [...]