Post-discharge outreach continues to prove itself as an effective patient experience best practice. It ensures the patient’s safe transition home and can reduce readmission risks. The question then turns to deciding the most efficient and effective method to conduct these calls, with some hospitals assigning the task to their existing care teams. However, assigning discharge calls to nurses or other care team members, who already have a demanding full-time job, can hinder an optimized approach for the following reasons:
Compromising Time for Providing Excellent Patient Care: Nurses and care staff play a crucial role in providing direct patient care. Adding discharge calls to their list of responsibilities can take their attention away from the immediate needs of patients currently in the hospital, potentially compromising the excellent quality of care your skilled team can provide.
Overload and Burnout: We all know that nurses are already stretched thin with their regular duties. Our latest National Nursing Study found 39.1% of nurses surveyed to be “Unengaged” in their work, with low engagement correlated to heightened burnout and low organizational commitment. The price of burnout comes with its own costs for organizations, like hiring fees and time needed for onboarding, which further promotes the purpose of keeping employees engaged. Indeed, assigning additional tasks like discharge calls can further contribute to the already-prevalent burnout experienced by many nurses, reducing job satisfaction. By utilizing a certified CARES™ team to personally call each of your patients, triaging can be handled for the large majority of your patients, keeping your time and attention on only the small percentage of patients that truly need your further support.
Reach and Safety Risk: Patients benefit from discharge calls that give them the dedicated time and focus necessary to answer any questions surrounding their transition home. Many organizations are challenged with having enough time for all departments to call 100% of patients discharged home, leaving many discharged patients without a discharge call for follow-up support, putting patients at risk for safety and readmissions that could otherwise be preventable.
Decentralized Structure: Effective discharge calls require specific skills and experience, which can be challenging to accomplish consistency with if discharge calls are siloed by department with various structures and teams being utilized. In contrast, a dedicated team trained and experienced in handling patient calls provides benefit of a centralized structure for oversight to support patients in an aligned way across service lines. Coupled with outreach from a CARES™ team member certified in empathy and documentation, this can ensure a centralized and specialized system for patients to receive the necessary support resources to reduce their risk of readmission. Unlike IVR technology, also considered by some organizations, live agents offer a personal and empathetic touch to provide patients an outlet for sharing their needs to feel heard and supported by a CARES™ certified team member that can also apply their critical thinking skills to each situation.
Missed Opportunities for Upstream Solutions: Utilizing a dedicated resource for discharge calls, such as an experienced patient call center team, acts as an extension of your organization. It’s a major benefit to work with a team that has a proven track record in both reducing readmission penalties and increasing patient satisfaction scores. Beyond the outreach to patients for a safe transition home, partnering with an organization that can provide you with themes and opportunity areas identified across all call feedback, positions you for upstream solutions, along with a coaching team to guide improvements, which accelerates focused improvement for boosting excellent experiences even further for your future patients.
Altogether, whether organizations outsource or have a dedicated team in-house, it’s easy to tie an ROI to having a dedicated discharge team. Trusting your discharge calls to a centralized and certified team creates a win-win situation: hospitals can ensure that nurses remain focused on what they do best—providing excellent patient care—while independently improving safety outcomes and readmission rates through personable outreach. Visit our CARES™ Connect page to learn how PRC provides meaningful and impactful post-discharge support for our clients and the patients they serve.