Patient Safety Measures:
Transitions in Care: Timeliness of Discharge Documentation
What are we measuring and why?
Whether patients return home or are transferred to a post-acute facility such as a rehabilitation center or nursing home, timely completion of clinical documentation during discharge is vital for ensuring safe patient transitions between clinical care settings. The physician should complete the discharge documentation within the following timeframe:
- On the day of discharge for patients going to post-acute care facilities;
- Within 24hrs of discharge for patients going home; and
- Not more than 2 days prior to discharge
How are we doing and how do we compare to national best practice?
When we review our performance, we only give ourselves credit when the clinical documentation during discharge is completed within the timeframe, aiming for a defect-free or perfect score of 100% timely completion.
What are we doing to improve?
Partners HealthCare has created hospital-based transition teams. We support them and their improvement efforts in many ways. We:
- Provide regular updates on their timely completion of discharge documentation performance
- Share best practices among all our hospitals
- Standardize staff education
- Work with individual hospitals on identifying solutions for problem areas
Charts for Transitions in Care: Timeliness of Discharge Documentation
- Current Scores
- Scores Over Time
- Current Scores
- Scores Over Time
% of Patients Whose Discharge Documentation Was Completed in a Timely Manner
Partners HealthCare Data Period: January - March 2012
Partners HealthCare Source: Partners HealthCare High Performance Medicine
Reference Point Source: Partners-wide Goal
% of Patients Whose Discharge Documentation Was Completed in a Timely Manner
Partners HealthCare Source: Partners HealthCare High Performance Medicine
Reference Point Source: Partners-wide Goal
% of Patients Whose Discharge Documentation Was Completed in a Timely Manner
Partners HealthCare Data Period: January - March 2012
Partners HealthCare Source: Partners HealthCare High Performance Medicine
Reference Point Source: Partners-wide Goal
% of Patients Whose Discharge Documentation Was Completed in a Timely Manner
Partners HealthCare Source: Partners HealthCare High Performance Medicine
Reference Point Source: Partners-wide Goal