Hospital Discharge Planners Need More Information When Referring Patients to Home Health Care: Insights From the Coronavirus Disease 2019 Pandemic

Abstract

Hospital discharge planners play an important role in helping patients choose appropriate home health care. However, during the COVID-19 pandemic, they may not have had enough information to make the best decisions for their patients. A study of 58 discharge planners from Michigan hospitals found that 90% of them wanted information about the quality of home health agencies and whether they were prepared for COVID-19. However, only about 20% had this information readily available. The study also found that discharge planners varied in how they incorporated quality information. Some did not incorporate any quality information at all, while others provided it to patients without explaining its significance. Only about 25% of discharge planners helped patients interpret different sources of information. These findings suggest that hospital discharge planners had an unmet need for quality information, and they also provided limited assistance to patients. This may have led to some patients receiving suboptimal care. Thus, we proposed that hospital discharge planners need more information about the quality of home health agencies. Discharge planners should be more transparent about the quality of information they have, and they should help patients interpret it.

Public Reporting and Consumer Demand in the Home Health Sector

“…General awareness of report cards for home health may be low, especially compared with skilled nursing facilities (Baier et al, 2015). A recent study examining hospital discharge planning practices for home health care continues to indicate that a majority of discharge planners do not incorporate star ratings when compiling home health care options for patients and most patients are not given accompanying home health care quality information when asked to select a home health agency (Li et al, 2023). It is also possible that the star ratings information does not correlate with dimensions of quality important to consumers.…”

“…One or more formal caregivers, such as a hospital discharge planner, case manager, or physician, typically influence a patient’s decision (Konetzka & Perraillon, 2016; Swope & Brown, 2015). For instance, a hospital discharge planner arranging a referral to home health could choose an agency for the patient or influence the patient’s selection by streamlining the options offered (Baier et al, 2015; Li et al, 2023; Swope & Brown, 2015). Thus, the observable demand response is a culmination of multiple actors’ input.…”