Summary: Improving Transitions Of Care

This is an opportunity for hospitals to work more closely with skilled nursing facilities and other post-acute providers to improve care transitions, and experience fewer readmissions. The ACA impacted hospitals by holding back a one percent reimbursement rate. Hospitals will actually need to perform and deliver high-quality evidenced based care to recover the one percent withheld reimbursement rate while hospitals that exceed the benchmark, will received a higher reimbursement rate over the one percent. The Act is intended to help spur the trend of more integrated care throughout the continuum. The Affordable care act (ACA) of 2010 designed programs for improvements and innovation in the quality of hospital care by instituting the Medicare’s hospital readmission reduction program. Through this program, CMS reduces Medicare payment bt one percent for hospitals for hospitals that demonstrated high rate of avoidable readmissions for patients with a diagnosis of heart failure, heart attack

Evidence supports transitional care programs as a means of improving quality of patient care and reducing 30-day readmission rates. Multiple models exist and all center on common goals of early patient identification, disease-specific patient education, medication reconciliation and education, office follow-up and timely coordination of care and sharing of medical records penitent to patient’s case.

The overall process of discharging a patient from a hospital and the transition back home or to a care facility are critical advancements in the overall course of both acute and long-term care. It is important that the hospitals releasing these patients have ensured the proper overall course of care from beginning to end. The lack of consistency with both the discharge process and the quality of discharge planning has led to many avoidable readmissions. To reduce the amount of hospital readmissions, it is imperative that hospitals recognize the need for focused patient care and that programs are being implemented to assist in the care transition.

The purpose of this paper is to bring forth awareness when it comes to patients and medication errors and further educates health care professionals on the importance of communication especially during transition of care. According to Williams and Ashrcoft (2013) “ An estimated median of 19.1 % of total opportunities for error in hospitals.” Although not all medication errors occur during transition it is the time most prevalent for these errors to occur. As per Johnson, Guirguis, and Grace (2015) “An estimated 60% of all medication errors occur during transition of care. The National Transitions of Care Coalition defines a transition of care as the movement of patients between healthcare locations, providers, or different levels of care within the same location as their conditions and care needs change, [and] frequently involves multiple persons, including the patient, the family member or other caregiver(s), nurse(s), social worker(s), case manager(s), pharmacist(s), physician(s), and other providers.”

The office would need to establish a goal to accommodate all post-discharge patients. When appointments cannot be made then an escalation process to the office manager needs to occur. In order to foster communication with professional partners, an investigation of the system failures. How can the transition to home be improved? The workflow should include a validation step that would entail hand-off communication between hospital rounders and office schedulers. If missteps occur, then the office staff could catch the near misses and call the patient at home. Care coordination among providers on an outpatient basis could be supported by the electronic medical record and having verbal care conferences. Next strategy could involve the hospital completing a call back within twenty-four hours to all patients discharged. This intervention could potentially catch some of the missed opportunities. Another approach involves face to face reinforcement of the patient-centered partnership with H. H. According to Counsil et al. (2012), “patient-centered care plans for complex patients changed the relationships with the health team” (p. 190). The development of this patient directed plan of care and partnership is

Studies have found that improvements in hospital discharge planning can dramatically improve the outcome for patients as they move to the next level of care (Alliance, 2016). Moreover, Patients, family caregivers and healthcare providers all play roles in maintaining a patient's health after discharge. And although it's a significant part of the overall care plan, conversely there is a surprising lack of consistency in both the process and quality of discharge planning across the healthcare system (S. Shapperd,

In 2013 an average of one out of eight Medicare patients are readmitted within a 30-day period which lead to the estimated costs of around $18 billion a year for Medicare patients alone. Hospitals will either be penalized or receive bonuses for their performance with readmissions. This program will encourage hospitals to concentrate on ways to improve coordinating transitions of care while improving the safety and quality of care provided. In order to

Transition of care appeals to me the most in my practice as a case manager. When a patient gets admitted, the interdisciplinary team starts working on the discharge planning. I always wonder how can the team know for sure, that the patient is ready to be transitioned and how can we know for sure that the transition of care is safe and it would not be overlook?

State Action on Avoidable Readmissions (STAAR) – this is a pilot program to improve care transition that concentrates on developing community-based and state-based

If you’re a caregiver you know that some days are better than others, but when you’re caring for a person who suffers from Alzheimer’s it can feel like things change from minute to minute. The professionals at Senior Care Transition Services provide free resources and senior living advice to people in the Dayton, OH, area who are looking for in home care providers, medical services, senior services, and assisted living communities. They know how trying caring for someone with Alzheimer’s can be and they have 3 valuable tips for all of the dedicated caregivers out there:

Partnership for Patients (PfP) has made significant progress in decreasing the number of preventable hospital acquired conditions (HACs), hospital readmissions, hospital patient deaths, and health care expenditures. Nonetheless, much work remains to be done so that PfP is more effective in their mission to make and improve care safety and care transitions. The progress made is part of a program that has been in effect since April of 2011, soon after sections 3011 and 3026 of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) were signed into law. These sections allowed then Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) Secretary, Kathleen Sebelius, and Center for Medicaid and Medicare Services (CMS) Administrator, Donald Burwick, to create and provide funding through Medicare for a dual program to reduce hospital readmissions and transition care services.

Policy makers created the Medicare Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program (HRRP) in an attempt to improve quality of patient care and lower costs (James, 2013). In order to avoid these penalties, healthcare leaders must recognize that CMS has identified a correlation between readmissions and a lack of quality care. Therefore, the aim is not to focus solely on hospital readmissions, but to seek clinical excellence by investing in quality improvement (Silow-Carrol, Edwards & Lashbrook, 2011). However, reducing readmissions is a complex undertaking, because not all readmissions can or should be prevented. Indeed, some readmissions are planned as part of sound clinical care. Furthermore, while hospitals work to reduce readmissions caused

The transitioning to a long-term care facility can be scary and stressful for residents, and some may find it difficult to adjust. I agree with you that the enabler role can be of great assistance to the resident and their families to help reduce the stress of entering a new facility. The frequent visits and encouragement from the social worker will let both the patient and their family know they will not be alone during this transition. Have you ever had to utilize the services of a social worker? In my current position, I come into contact with patients who require the support of a social worker typically for help with resources that they need to attain. Being a social worker is a demanding position since they are there to assist the patient,

(Elhauge, 2010). Fragmentation leads to duplication of tests and effort. Often, physicians do not have test results and notes from prior treatments. This results in wasteful duplication of efforts. Fragmentation leads to unplanned hospitalizations. Approximately 20% of discharged Medicare patients are re-hospitalized within thirty days. (Jencks, Williams, Coleman, 2009) It is estimated that only 10% of those readmissions are planned. (Jencks, Williams, Coleman, 2009) Patients can receive better continuation of care if their doctors coordinated better, if there was better discharge planning and incentives for providers to control costs after the patient has been discharged.

For years, healthcare costs have continued to increase in the United States and policymakers are constantly trying to find ways to reduce spending. According to reports, in 2011, about $900 billion out of the $2.6 trillion annual health care spending was wasteful spending. In the following year, there was a reported $690 billion wasted annually on healthcare. This wasteful spending is attributed to ineffective health care delivery, cost of adverse events, and poor care coordination that has led to avoidable readmissions (Lallemand, 2012). In the United States, readmissions are the highest amongst patients with chronic diseases accounting for about 90% of avoidable readmissions in 30 days after discharge, and costing the industry an estimated $17 billion. These readmissions are a result of inadequate discharge planning, lack of follow-up, and lack of education on disease management (Jayakody et al., 2016). Policymakers on the federal and state level have developed and implemented several programs, some varying state to state, to help reduce wasteful spending while improving quality of care.