Hospitals should look at patient discharges as a primary place to improve patient experience, Fred Pelzman, MD, medical director of New York City-based Weill Cornell Internal Medicine Associates, said in an opinion piece published Oct. 2 in Medpage Today.
Discharges are the "perfect time for communication to happen" and for the hospitalist team, patient and caregivers to come together to tie up loose ends.
"We've all read discharge summaries that have been huge cut-and-paste jobs, endless amounts of data brought together into one lengthy document that doesn't offer much insight into what happened during the admission," Dr. Pelzman wrote. "I understand why people feel the need to do this, but, like a good progress note, a discharge summary should really be about communicating what happened during the inpatient time, what needs to happen next, and making sure that everyone knows their future roles and responsibilities."
Dr. Pelzman encourages hospitals to find a new way to plan for the transition to home and "stop kidding ourselves in thinking that these discharge summaries as they are written now are the be-all and end-all of the truth of an admission."
He suggested discharge discussions should start one or two days before discharge via chat, Zoom or a phone call. Free-form-style communication during these meetings could help patients understand the imperatives of their care and create an ideal model of collaboration and communication.
"This will take some commitment, a lot of resources, some changing of the mindsets of a lot of people, but perhaps if we stop, breathe and take the time to get this right, we'll all be better off," he wrote. "Better a few minutes of quality communication than endless drivel that does no one any good and has the potential to cause a lot of harm."