Hospitals Need Clear Discharge Processes

A new article in JAMA Internal Medicine demonstrates that hospitals need clearer discharge processes for older patients. Researchers suggest that patient satisfaction with the discharge process doesn't explain how well they actually understood the reasons for hospitalization and the care goals following hospitalization. You can learn more about this study on FierceHealthcare.com.

In thinking about designing an effective discharge process, it's important to involve the right partners.  INQRI researchers at Marquette University, led by Marianne Weiss and Olga Yakusheva, would tell you that nurses should be involved.  They identified the contributions that nursing staff make to the quality of discharge teaching and the impact of that teaching on patient outcomes, readiness and readmission rates of patients who are discharged home. They found that when units had more RN hours per patient day, fewer overtime hours and fewer vacancies, the discharge teaching was of higher quality, patients reported greater readiness for hospital discharge, and post-discharge utilization of readmission and emergency room visits was lower.

For more information about the INQRI study, please click here.