Rediseño del proceso de alta hospitalaria

Abstract

Objective The aim of this article is to show that the redesign and planning process of hospital discharge advances the departure time of the patient from a hospital environment. Material and method Quasi-experimental study conducted from January 2011 to April 2013, in a local hospital. The cases analysed were from medical and surgical nursing units. The process was redesigned to coordinate all the professionals involved in the process. The hospital discharge improvement process improvement was carried out by forming a working group, the analysis of retrospective data, identifying areas for improvement, and its redesign. The dependent variable was the time of patient administrative discharge. The sample was classified as pre-intervention, inter-intervention, and post-intervention, depending on the time point of the study. Results The final sample included 14,788 patients after applying the inclusion and exclusion criteria. The mean discharge release time decreased significantly by 50 min between pre-intervention and post-intervention periods. The release time in patients with planned discharge was one hour and 25 min less than in patients with unplanned discharge. Conclusions Process redesign is a useful strategy to improve the process of hospital discharge. Besides planning the discharge, it is shown that the patient leaving the hospital before 12 midday is a key factor.