Background: Delayed discharge is a frequent issue in majority of the hospitals as discharge Turn Around Time (TAT) for insured patients is higher than uninsured patients. The present study was conducted on insured in-patients to identify the predictors of discharge delays. Second, the impact of TAT of various steps of discharge process was analyzed on the overall discharge TAT. Finally, the intermediate TATs having highest predicting effect on the overall TAT were identified. Methods: This cross-sectional study was done on insured in-patients of a corporate hospital in Pune city from May to July 2015. TAT of the six steps of discharge process and the overall TAT was tracked and analyzed across Length of Stay (LOS) and discharge type using independent t-test. The six TATs were analyzed for predicting effect on overall TAT using correlation and linear regression. Results: The mean discharge TAT for insured patients ( n = 443) was 390 (±122.03) minutes. Intervening TATs for submitting discharge summary to TPA department and the final bill approval from insurance company had highest predicting effect on overall TAT through statistical analysis. Discharge TAT did not vary significantly for planned/unplanned discharge but significantly increased by 1 hour for high LOS patients ( p-value < 0.001). Conclusion: Discharge delay for insured patients is a common phenomenon. Hospitals and insurance companies must make combined efforts to control the delay. Further the delay from hospitals must be checked by timely submission of discharge summary and required reports as well as sending a quick reply to the generated queries.

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