After visit summary: In-patient transition

Penny Wheeler, MD, chief clinical officer, Allina Health, explains how the after visit summary can support patients, as they transition from the in-patient hospital service to their next setting of care.

Read the transcript.

After visit summary

Hi, I'm Penny Wheeler, Allina's chief clinical officer. I'm here to talk to you today about a very important work that were doing, to try to support patients, as they transition from the in-patient hospital service to their next setting of care and that portion of work is the after visit summary.

The Allina Health Transition of Care Program in general is designed to help support patients, as they make transitions from one setting of care to another and reduce things like avoidable readmissions.

A key component of this is making sure that patients and their caregivers understand what they should be doing, as they transition to that different setting. That's where the after visit summary comes into play.

One of our goals, as a health system is to try to support patients and reduce avoidable readmissions. Our goal this year is to do so by reducing them by 15 percent. That really equates to 450 patients, who can be better cared for at home or a home like setting and avoid an unnecessary admission to the hospital. Again, the after visit summary provides us, as a mechanism to do just that.

It's fortunate that today where not only is it the right thing to do for our patients, but also we're being rewarded financially for being able to keep people appropriately out of the hospital, when they don't require acute stays for their care.

The after visit summaries are a focus initiative within the Transitions of Care Program. We will provide all caregivers with an eLearning capability, so that they can see how this will support their patients transitions of care, making sure they're on the right medications and making sure we can reconcile all the components of their care that are necessary, as they make this challenging transition. We really appreciate in advance your participation in this work that will have such meaning to the people that we serve.

Allina physician leadership is committed, to helping support this after visit summary for the patients that we serve. We really appreciate everybody's support, as the, the bottom line is this is the right thing to do for the patients we serve.

Thank you in advance for your participation and for the care you provide our patients each and every day.

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