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Electronic patient discharge summaries

Concerned that poor or late discharge summaries could compromise patient safety and continuity of care after leaving hospital, Swindon and Marlborough NHS Trust, together with their commissioning PCTs, set themselves a target to improve the patient discharge process. The Trust treats and discharges 29,000 inpatients back to the community each year, and recognised that much improvement could be made to the existing process. A paperbased manual process meant that staff in different departments handled the discharge process differently and at least seven forms were used to inform the patient discharge (or transfer) process. This duplicated effort, extended the time to complete the summary forms, and added unnecessary complexity. The process was error prone, with data that already existed on other forms or stored electronically being re-entered as hand-written patient demographics and prescriptions for ‘To Take Away’ (TTA) drugs.

Even when completed, delivery of the discharge summary was not guaranteed. It was not uncommon for the patient to be asked to present the summary to their GP at their next appointment or within a few days of leaving hospital. Unfortunately, in many cases the summary did not reach the GP at all; and those that did were hand-written carbonised copies with 50% being unreadable or missing vital information. Without a prompt delivery of the summary, GPs and community clinicians were often making calls back to the Trust to get essential information about their patients’ treatment, test results, and new or altered medication.

Click here to download the full case study:
SwindonMarlDischargeCaseStudy.pdf

or contact:
janet.waplington@wcigroup.com