The LAB: Innovating Health Care with S.I.T. (August 2009)
Discharging patients from the hospital is a critical aspect of health care delivery. It is a time of transition where one group of care givers stops treating the patient and another group starts. The most frequent type of transition occurs when patients go from hospital to home, happening nearly 40 million times each year in the U.S.. Studies show that about 20 percent of discharged patients have an adverse event – a preventable emergency department visit or re-admission – within 30 days following hospitalization. The discharge process is so important that a cottage industry is emerging around it. Some consultants, software products, best practices, training, and research studies focus just on discharging patients.
To use S.I.T., we start by listing the components of the service (process):