Refining Transitions of Care: A Quality Improvement Project to Improve the Timeliness of Discharge Documentation

Care transitions are the events that occur when patient care is transferred among different health care settings and requires actions that ensure safety, coordination, and continuity.(1) Hospital discharges are precarious care transitions as discontinuity between acute and ambulatory care can lead to dangerous adverse events (AEs).(2) For example, 20% of Medicare patients who are discharged from the hospital are readmitted within 30 days of discharge.(3) Further, nearly 2.3 million emergency department (ED) visits annually involve patients discharged from a hospital within 1 week of their ED visit.(4)