Why Hospital Discharges Take So Long —And What We Can Do To Shorten Them

This article discusses some organizational and workflow measures that hospitals are taking to shorten discharge times, saving money along the way. A subsequent article will chime in with some technologies that help. Factors Delaying Discharges Where to begin? So many hospital activities were cited by respondents to my question that I can hope at best to summarize the most salient of them. I’ll run through the observations quickly in order to get to solutions, which boil down to “Think about what you’re doing.” First, according to Donna Pritchard and Joy Avery of CipherHealth, a company with a communications platform for healthcare, discharge may take time because a lot of important procedures lie between the doctor’s proclamation and the actual discharge. The patient might need some physical therapy, more tests to prove they are free of disease, a dose of antibiotics, etc. Lisa Weber, Director, Healthcare Industry Practice at UiPath—a company that automates elements of the workflow in healthcare and other industries—offers a partial list of people who participate in discharging the patient: the patient themselves, patient caregivers, charge nurse, doctor, therapists, and care manager. Complexities multiply as we look at external conditions that have to be met. Is the patient’s caretaker at work at the time of discharge? It might take hours for a wife or daughter to arrive to take the patient home. Does the patient even have a caretaker?...
Source: EMR and HIPAA - Category: Information Technology Authors: Tags: Administration AI/Machine Learning Analytics/Big Data Clinical Communication and Patient Experience Health IT Company Healthcare IT Hospital - Health System ABOUT Andrew Y Shin Care Managers Carta Healthcare Cindy Gaines CipherHe Source Type: blogs