The Effectiveness of a Multidisciplinary Electronic Discharge Readiness Tool: Prospective, Single-Center, Pre-Post Study

BACKGROUND: In the face of hospital capacity strain, hospitals have developed multifaceted plans to try to improve patient flow. Many of these initiatives have focused on the timing of discharges and on lowering lengths of stay, and they have met with variable success. We deployed a novel tool in the electronic health record to enhance discharge communication. OBJECTIVE: The aim of this study is to evaluate the effectiveness of a discharge communication tool. METHODS: This was a prospective, single-center, pre-post study. Hospitalist physicians and advanced practice providers (APPs) used the Discharge Today Tool to update patient discharge readiness every morning and at any time the patient status changed throughout the day. Primary outcomes were tool use, time of day the clinician entered the discharge order, time of day the patient left the hospital, and hospital length of stay. We used linear mixed modeling and generalized linear mixed modeling, with team and discharging provider included in all the models to account for patients cared for by the same team and the same provider. RESULTS: During the pilot implementation period from March 5, 2019, to July 31, 2019, a total of 4707 patients were discharged (compared with 4558 patients discharged during the preimplementation period). A total of 352 clinical staff had used the tool, and 84.85% (3994/4707) of the patients during the pilot period had a discharge status assigned at least once. In a survey, most respondents reported that the tool was helpful (32/34, 94% of clinical staff) and either saved time or did not add additional time to their workflow (21/24, 88% of providers, and 34/34, 100% of clinical staff). Although improvements were not observed in either unadjusted or adjusted analyses, after including starting morning census per team as an effect modifier, there was a reduction in the time of day the discharge order was entered into the electronic health record by the discharging physician and in the time of day the patient left the hospital (decrease of 2.9 minutes per additional patient, P=.07, and 3 minutes per additional patient, P=.07, respectively). As an effect modifier, for teams that included an APP, there was a significant reduction in the time of day the patient left the hospital beyond the reduction seen for teams without an APP (decrease of 19.1 minutes per patient, P=.04). Finally, in the adjusted analysis, hospital length of stay decreased by an average of 3.7% (P=.06). CONCLUSIONS: The Discharge Today tool allows for real time documentation and sharing of discharge status. Our results suggest an overall positive response by care team members and that the tool may be useful for improving discharge time and length of stay if a team is staffed with an APP or in higher-census situations.