Triaging the Transitions — It’s time to fix the broken process for transitions of care, says Fred N. Pelzman, MD.
July 16, 2015Fred N. Pelzman, MD.
It seems that our transitions of care leave something to be desired.
These delicate tipping points, when patients are sometimes at their most fragile, need to be set up with exquisite attention to detail, and often leave our patients at high risk for bad outcomes…..
…. The best discharge summary I ever got was written by a nurse practitioner at an unnamed hospital in Boston, who sent a patient home for follow-up in our practice after a prolonged hospitalization.
This thing read like a short story, the prose was succinct and informative, and after I finished it I felt like I had been there through his entire hospitalization, and I was ready to continue taking care of him. A successful, warm handoff. Read more