-
Discharge planning for orthopedic surgery patients at one major hospital begins well in advance of patients being admitted for surgery.
-
Discharge planners know intuitively that what they do matters to patients' health and safety and to reducing the public health costs of repeated hospitalizations.
-
-
Too often health care professionals give patients instructions and education without taking the additional step of making sure they understand.
-
Hospitals across the United States are seeing an increase in patients who have limited English proficiency (LEP), and this means discharge planners must plan accordingly.
-
Transitions in health care are changing more quickly than patients' expectations, which is why it's important to address these expectations head-on, an expert notes.
-
Sometimes the best response to regulatory and payer changes in health care is to improve the discharge planning process.
-
One key to discharge planning is understanding what might prevent your patient from following medication and other instructions.
-
Tracheostomy confers patient benefits such as decreasing laryngeal irritation, improving patient communication, and decreasing sedation requirements, but the optimal timing of this procedure in critically ill patients remains a subject of considerable debate.
-
Investigators in the Department of Neurology at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN, reviewed the charts of patients admitted with myasthenic crisis (MC) between 1987 and 2006 who received either invasive or noninvasive mechanical ventilation.