Abstract
Purpose: Delays in discharge from hospitals have both social and financial burdens to patients, providers, and hospitals. This project will address the delays in discharge from an adult inpatient psychiatric unit, and whether the transition of the multi-disciplinary care team has a significant impact.|Background: Building on an existing knowledge base of research that identifies common causes for delay and the associated costs incurred by acute care hospitals; addressing the care team transition has only been recently identified as a cause for a delay of discharge. Based on a review of the literature, state and federal agencies are engaged in research studies with the intention of developing tools that will address the cause of delayed discharge from the hospital, some looking specifically at psychiatrically hospitalized patients. Several large-scale studies are currently being conducted, with the intent to affect policy change and develop practice guidelines that will reduce the causes of delayed discharge. The results of these studies could provide helpful information that will contribute to ongoing research into the specific discharge needs of psychiatric patients. Several states including Minnesota have begun researching the cause and cost of delayed discharge for psychiatrically hospitalized patients, recognizing that delays in discharge have significant costs that result in negative consequences to healthcare systems. This project will apply the current knowledge to practice changes on a 16-bed inpatient psychiatric unit, to assess the impact of the delays of discharge related to multi-disciplinary care team transitions.|Sample/Setting: Patients voluntarily admitted to an adult psychiatric unit of a Large Medical Center in SE Minnesota|Methods: Record review, discharge checklist and pre and post provider surveys|Results: Implementation of a comprehensive discharge checklist decreased delays of discharge by 20% on an adult psychiatric inpatient unit. Providers reported increased satisfaction with the availability and centralized location of discharge information.|Conclusion: The use of a comprehensive discharge checklist demonstrated an improvement in the number of discharges on days where there was a transition in the multi-disciplinary treatment team, decreasing delays, and it improved hand-off between providers on the multi-disciplinary treatment team when transitions of care occurred.