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Taking time to improve the “hospital to home” transition
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It’s an all-too-familiar scenario: patients with chronic respiratory disease experience an event that requires hospitalization. With excellent care, their condition improves, and they are discharged home. But in the transition to home, the care continuum is interrupted. Without proper in-home management, patients can wind up being readmitted. This can become an unfortunate pattern that can ultimately harm the patient—and add to healthcare costs. Today, despite increasing awareness among both clinicians and the community at large that patients would rather be treated at home, many clinicians still do not fully appreciate the importance of connected care to patient outcomes. Many hospitals do not have programs to efficiently and effectively transition patients to their homes. In fact, chronically ill patients do better at home with the right kind of continuous and connected care. They experience a better quality of life, with improved well-being and reduced hospital readmissions.1
The connected care challenge
For most practices, implementing hospital-to-home program can be a challenge because the information available on how to do this is fragmented, with no clearly defined protocols. However, by discussing this challenge with your team, educating yourself and your team about the evidence supporting the advantages of proper at-home care, learning about the role that technology can play, and devising a transition protocol, you can make positive changes. First and foremost, your patients will benefit. Second, you will have developed an additional treatment capability that can set your practice apart.
Why not start today?
One way to think about how to incorporate an effective transition to home protocol for your practice is to start with one patient. With the appropriate therapeutic approach and right technologies, you and your team can develop a connected care plan that transitions home with the patient. The lessons that result from following one patient can then be appropriately adjusted and applied—so that all your patients can benefit.
Chronically ill patients do better at home, where they can lead more active lives. By effectively providing connected care for them, you can help keep them there.
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Worldwide, chronic conditions are on the rise, presenting continually growing care challenges. Time and again, we have seen the positive impact that connected care can have not only on patients, but on the care teams that serve them.”
- John Frank, Business Leader for Sleep and Respiratory Care, Philips
1 The impact of integrated care for people with chronic conditions on hospital and emergency department utilization: a rapid review. Stephenson MD, Lisy K, Stern CJ, Feyer AM, Fisher L, Aromataris EC. Int J Evid Based Healthc. 2018 Sep 20.
