Monday, February 16, 2015

Discharge summary quality for heart failure hospitalizations

The conclusion from recent findings:

Even at the highest performing hospital, discharge summary quality is insufficient in terms of timeliness, transmission, and content. Improvements in all aspects of discharge summary quality are necessary to enable the discharge summary to serve as an effective transitional care tool.

Elements that were missing in almost all discharge summaries were discharge weight and discharge volume status. Discharging patients “too wet” has previously been cited as a driver of recurrent heart failure hospitalizations.

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