Discharge Instructions Given to Patients
Why is this important?
The symptoms of heart failure do not end when the patient leaves the hospital. Therefore, it is very important that the patient understands how to manage these symptoms on his or her own. Hospital staff should provide heart failure patients with easy-to-understand instructions when they leave the hospital.
How WellSpan Compares
Last year, York Hospital and Gettysburg Hospital treated 921 patients with heart failure. The following shows the percentage of patients who were given instructions on how to manage their symptoms upon discharge.
Unit of Measurement:
Percentage
A higher score is better than a lower score.
What we are doing to improve our performance.
A team of WellSpan doctors, nurses and other care givers, known as the “Congestive Heart Failure Clinical Effectiveness Team,” meets regularly to review important information and strategies for improving care for congestive heart failure (CHF) patients. So far, the team has revised and standardized forms that doctors and nurses use and the procedures they follow to make sure that everyone who should receive a beta blocker does receive a prescription for a beta blocker when they are discharged from the hospital. They also have developed important patient education material and continuously analyze how they provide care to CHF patients. WellSpan will continue to monitor the success of these changes and recommend other improvement steps as follows:
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Efforts are under way to improve WellSpan’s depth of information on all of the patient’s medications.
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An education packet is provided to each heart failure patient prior to discharge. This material covers what heart failure is and what the treatment goals are. WellSpan has developed a “heart care plan” notebook for each patient that includes the patient education packet, important documents and communication forms. Each patient receives one, keeps it as a resource and takes it to their family doctor appointments to make sure all care providers are working toward the same patient goals.