Better Support Needed for People when being Discharged from Hospital

A recent report  by BBC News Online Health Editor Michelle Roberts  provides several heart wrenching stories of older persons being sent home from the hospital afraid and with little support. According to Roberts, an independent Ombudsman report revealed that in one year over 211 complaints were investigated. 

Poor planning, coordination and communication between hospital and staff and between health and social care services are inefficiencies blamed for the close to one third increase in the number of complaints investigated over the previous year. 

​Additionally according to the news article, the UK’s Parliamentary and Health Services Ombudsman (PHSO) report identified four main issues.  These are:

• Patients being discharged before they are clinically ready to leave hospital
• Patients not being assessed or consulted properly before their discharge
• Relatives and carers not being told that their loved one has been discharged
• Patients being discharged with no home-care plan in place or being kept in hospital due to poor co-ordination across services

Roberts quoted an NHS Improvement spokesman who offered that while patients should not be discharged from hospital without the appropriate safeguards in place, they should also never remain stuck in the hospital. According to the NHS Improvement spokesman it is “better” to get older persons home as quickly as possible and to assess them in their own homes. However he notes that in order for this to be done, the right help and support must be in place.

In working with healthcare professionals to understand the challenges with discharge planning and to incorporate features such as multidisciplinary assessments, personalised online alerts, and care outcome tracking features into our care-planning software; AssessPatients can an ideal support tool when planning discharges.

More specifically, the AssessPatient’s  care planning software will directly address the issue of patients being discharged with no home care plan in place, while also fostering better coordination, and communication between hospital and staff and between health and social care services.

AssessPatients' software application supports an integrated discharge process for older persons, and better seamless coordination and communication across the board through with the following features:

• A detailed multidisciplinary care assessment incorporating different care needs such as frailty, falls, dementia, stroke , quality of living etc 
• A current set of care outcomes  including what has been achieved and what is in progress 
• An ability to securely provide all of this information  to the community care team 
• and an ability for both the hospital and community teams to share and plan specific discharges. 

Of additional value to hospitals is the fact that AssessPatients' dashboard is able to provide advanced notice on numbers of patients due for discharge and their care needs. 

Also of note is the alerts feature in the AssessPatients mobile application which allows health care professionals to track any event which may happen to an older person and who in the care team is to be alerted. Through this feature online and email updates are immediately sent to the designated care team member if a particular event occurs.

The BBC Online News Report included a concern from the Charity Independent Age that the cases highlighted in the Ombudsman report signaled a health service under strain. Additionally the Royal College of Nursing offered that it was hard for staff to consistently provide high quality, safe patient care without the right resources. We are strongly of the view that technological advances such as AssessPatients care planning application is the key to improving the existing care system and building better integrated care models with seamless communication across care providers and health care professionals.

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Reference:
Roberts, M. (2016). Ombudsman: Patients Sent Home Afraid and With Little Support.  BBC News online. Retrieve from http://www.bbc.com/news/health-36250079