ANMCO Position Paper: hospital discharge planning: recommendations and standards

The hospital discharge is often poorly standardized and affected by discontinuity and fragmentation of care, putting patients at high risk of both post-discharge adverse events and early readmission. The present ANMCO document reviews the modifiable components of the hospital discharge process related to adverse events or re-hospitalizations and suggests the optimal methods for redesigning the whole discharge process. The key principles for proper hospital discharge or transfer of care acknowledge that the hospital discharge:

• is not an isolated event, but a process that has to be planned as soon as possible after the admission, ensuring that the patient and the caregiver understand and contribute to the planned decisions, as equal partners;

• is facilitated by a comprehensive systemic approach that begins with a multidimensional evaluation process;

• must be organized by an operator who is responsible for the coordination of all phases of the hospital patient journey, involving afterward the general practitioner and transferring to them the information and responsibility at discharge;

• is the result of an integrated multidisciplinary team approach;

• appropriately uses the transitional and intermediate care services;

• is carried out in an organized system of care and continuum of services; and

• programs the passage of information to after-discharge services.