Discharge Plans

When the Discharge Planner showed up in my hospital room 4 or  days into my stay, I acted bemused but in reality I was impressed.  Bemused because it seemed like everyone else on the staff acted as if they expected me to spend my whole life in the hospital and I should stop entertaining thoughts of going home.  Impressed because I knew how far the healthcare industry had come.

Back in the 1970's when I was helping to run a 300 bed hospital, we had one person spending half her time trying to keep track of Medicare patients.  She was supposed to do "discharge planning" which at that time meant "finding a place that will take the patient when we can't do anything for them".  And that meant ANY place she could find and arm twist into taking the patient.

Now in my case the DP had investigated several choices and had considered my needs and resources.  The recommendation was originally for a nursing home so that I could have 24 hour/day nursing care available.  I "needed" around-the-clock feeding, supervision and medication.  Carolyn, knowing how much I would look forward to a nursing home stay, hustled around for two home health aides to provide the daytime supervision I needed when she was at work.

That made the DP's job easier but it didn't slow her down a bit.  At this point she shifted into "supply and equipment" mode.  Since my discharge plan required that I be tube fed through a G-tube she made sure that a month's supply of "tube food" was at our house and a smaller supply to take home.  She arranged for the appropriate healthcare staff set up appointments to train our home health aides and members of my family in maintaining our lawn AND me.

Right up until I rolled from my hospital bed onto the ambulance gurney, my Discharge Planner was calling and meeting with people involved in my transition care.  She made the often troublesome change look like a well-oiled machine leaving me to watch the discharge process.