FierceHealthcare recently reported the discharge process continues to be a major hurdle for healthcare leaders looking to reduce readmissions because many patients do not understand their discharge instructions.New strategies are being introduced to improve the process such as treating discharge more like the admissions process and dispensing medications at that point.
Successful interventions incorporate this attention to detail that is found in the admissions process, said Dhruv Kullar, M.D., a resident physician at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School.
A study published in Pediatrics also found that patients who were discharged with medications in hand significantly reduced the odds of readmission. Another solution is to identify high-risk patients and implement discharge plans over a 30-day period after a thorough discharge process.
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