Patient Discharge Process

Traditionally the discharge process has been handled by nursing and a nurse case manager. Patients with pulmonary disease, acute or chronic are a significant part of hospital readmission rates. Overall, patients with one respiratory disease process pneumonia, can account for 38.5 percent of hospital readmissions. (Dharmarajan et al., 2013) The needs of discharged patients are not being met up to 81% of patients needing assistance with basic functional needs failed to receive home care referrals and consequently 64% of these patients reported that no one at the hospital had talked to them about “managing at home.” (Clark et al., 2005) Other studies have found that 50% of at-risk patients failed to receive home care referrals that they needed. (Rosswurm &Lanham 1998) The current discharge process remains broken, and a multidisciplinary discharge process needs to be implemented to address the current shortcomings. Respiratory therapy needs to demonstrate their value in their involvement in the discharge process, despite the fact a Nurse has provided this service already.
In the current health care system, there has been a significant shift in how Medicare reimburses hospitals for the services they provide to Medicare recipients. Under the Affordable Care Act, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services have put in …show more content…
Respiratory therapies involvement in the multidisciplinary discharge process can have a great impact to a particular subset of patients that receive pulmonary services during their hospital admission. Respiratory therapy is the experts in the treatment, care and long-term management of pulmonary patients as with the disease process and treatments of asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and other pulmonary