Discharge Planning
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Communication Tools Can Prevent Medication Errors After Discharge
A discharge medication communication bundle can help prevent liquid medication errors when caregivers treat children at home after hospital discharge, new research shows. The communication bundle resulted in fewer caregivers making medication errors when compared with a group receiving standard care.
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Ways to Improve Warm Handoffs and Transitions for Wound Care Patients
Warm handoffs and better patient/caregiver education on wound care can improve healing when patients are discharged. One way is to ask the patient for permission to take photos of the wound to show caregivers and community providers what it looked like at discharge.
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Wound Care Patients Receive Inadequate Care Coordination and Follow-Up
Inadequately preparing patients and caregivers for wound care at home can be costly. Pressure ulcers can cost tens of thousands of dollars a year, per patient. Each patient with this wound needs costly supplies and a special hospital bed. Nurses must turn them every two hours.
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Unmet Social Needs May Be Reason for ED Visit
Many unmet social needs are the true underlying reason for ED visits, although they often go unrecognized at the time of presentation.
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Ethicists Are Addressing Social Determinants of Health
Clinicians have begun to focus more attention on identifying and addressing patients’ social determinants of health. Ethicists are doing the same during consults.
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Case Managers, Others Can Monitor Utilization Patterns Through EHRs
Research into a novel cancer survivorship database to describe healthcare utilization patterns highlights how this information can be used to coordinate care after treatment — and how difficult it is to obtain.
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Blood Pressure Management with Devices Improved Outcomes During the Pandemic
When the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted case management, care coordination, transitions, and clinical monitoring of patients with chronic illness, the entire health industry switched to remote monitoring, virtual clinic visits, and virtual case management whenever feasible. A new study revealed that using self-measured blood pressure monitoring and telehealth were among the top ways healthcare professionals adapted to the pandemic’s forced limits on in-person clinic visits.
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Case Management Program Highlights Challenges of Working with High-Need Populations
Care coordinators and case managers know their work makes a positive difference in patients’ lives, but proving this is challenging. For example, the Camden Coalition Care Management Program demonstrated some positive outcomes related to high-cost, high-need patients, including increasing patients’ visits with providers within two weeks after their hospitalizations. However, it did not change their rate of readmissions.
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Care Transitions Break Down Due to Information Delays and Workflow Issues
An impediment to care transition occurs when primary care providers refer patients to specialty consultants and do not send enough information, the authors of a recent study found.
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Health System’s Case Managers Shorten Length of Stay for Complex Patients
Placing case managers in acute care and ambulatory settings to focus on transitions of complex patients could help shorten length of stay.